


Another Think Coming

by TheDukeofAvon



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chicago Blackhawks, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 10:59:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2690363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDukeofAvon/pseuds/TheDukeofAvon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fake telepathy was Jonny’s idea. Management has been on Patrick’s case about hockey bonds, and this should finally satisfy them. Patrick has never wanted any of it - teammates or soulmates or anyone else in his head. Jonny does want a soulmate, but Patrick isn’t it. Patrick is just the perfect stopgap.</p>
<p>Faking it is going a little too well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Think Coming

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in some AU 2014, but I wrote most of it in July/August, so none of it has anything to do with the actual current season. 
> 
> Thank you so much to cathedralhearts and frosting50 for beta reading/advice/encouragement! Any mistakes are definitely my fault. And thanks also to everyone else who provided cheerleading. 
> 
> Also, thanks to halfeatenmoon for the mix!   
> You can listen to it here:  
> [8tracks](https://8tracks.com/halfeatenmoon/here-and-now-not-forever) | [Zip](http://www.mediafire.com/download/f7zm2oq08rc9m0f/Here+and+now%2C+not+forever.zip)

Two of the bartenders are bonded. Patrick’s been watching them for 15 minutes now, and the blond guy’s been relaying drink orders to the tattooed guy without ever opening his mouth. It’s probably very useful when it’s this loud in here. 

Patrick is wedged in between Bicks and some lady asking the blond bartender for recommendations. He needs another drink. Sharpy is around here somewhere.

Books and movies really play up the scenes where a character meets someone they’re bond-compatible with. Patrick once saw a film with Nicolas Cage where he collapsed to the ground screaming. But Patrick’s been through it half a dozen times by now and he’d only describe it as: he gets a feeling. 

Many years ago, Patrick Kane met Patrick Sharp and got a feeling. They decided to never, ever talk about it, ever again.

But Sharpy told Abby last winter, and Abby talked about it when Hoss was there because she thought he knew. Shawzy overheard Sharpy and Hoss, and then the whole team knew.

Then management knew, and management decided that bonding their second-line wingers was the solution to their center problem. Everybody knows that bonded hockey players play better together. They say it’s like having eyes in the back of your head.

Bicks is eyeing Patrick as he shouts for another beer.

“Gotta start the season off with a bang!” says Patrick. 

Bonding with Sharpy would be one way of doing that. The Hawks have been on the hunt for a bonded pair for awhile now. They can’t exactly force him, but they can make him pay. And Sharp, damn him, has lost his mind and decided he’s now totally cool with having Patrick in his head every time they’re within a few hundred feet of each other, for the rest of their lives. 

Patrick is not cool with it. Patrick is incredibly not cool with it. He’s also well on his way to being incredibly drunk, but none of that is anybody else’s business. Not like it would be if he had someone else in his head.

There are things Patrick doesn’t want Sharpy to know. A lot of things. The kinds of things that will haunt a friendship forever.

And, fuck it, Patrick doesn’t _want_ to bond with anybody. It’s loud enough inside his head without adding someone else to the mix. If he ended up unable to skate on the same rink as Sharpy—well, he wouldn’t be the first guy to have that problem. Bonding isn’t without its risks.

Patrick is maybe a little bit terrified of the whole thing.

He gets his beer and walks away to find a spot where he has room to move his arms up and down. He doesn’t really want to talk to anyone on the team. Nobody else knows that the Sharpy thing is pretty much a go, but everybody’s going on about bonds anyway. Boston is making a stink about them. The Bruins didn’t know Seguin was compatible with Benn when they traded him, and nobody believes the Stars didn’t know either. The lawsuit is pending. It’s the latest hockey bond mess.

Patrick sidles toward the wall and sips his beer. Maybe it won’t be so bad. At least he’s not one of those weirdos like Tazer who wants to bond for romance. If Jonny was compatible with Sharpy, would he take one for the team? Patrick isn’t sure. It seems important, suddenly, that he knows the answer to this, but he can’t see Jonny anywhere in the crowd.

Someone jostles him from behind, and he whirls around, almost dropping his beer.

“Shit,” says Patrick. It’s Jonny, because of course it is, looming up out of the crush around the bar. 

“Hey,” says Jonny, nodding to him. He’s holding a drink with an umbrella in it, so at least he has no room to judge any of Patrick’s choices tonight.

Patrick raises his glass vaguely in Jonny’s direction.

“So I was thinking,” says Jonny, very gravely, and Patrick realizes that Jonny is _way_ drunker than he is. That could be interesting, so he’d better not miss anything.

“C’mon, it’s too loud in here,” says Patrick, and pushes Jonny ahead of him toward the exit. Outside is quieter, though not by much, because it’s a warm night and people are milling around the sidewalk, talking and smoking.

“Okay,” says Patrick when he can speak normally again. “What’s up?”

“I was thinking,” Jonny repeats. “You don’t want to bond with Sharpy, do you?”

Jonny is still holding his stupid drink. You’re not allowed to take them outside.

“I said I would.” Patrick chews on his lower lip. He hasn’t signed anything—yet. But if he backs out now, that’s not gonna go over well with the club. Patrick doesn’t know that he’s any more ready to pack his bags and leave than he is to bond with someone.

“Stupid,” Jonny says. “If you didn’t want to, you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yeah, thanks for giving me advice two days late. Where were _you_ during all of this, anyway?” It’s a stupid thing to worry about; Jonny has his life and he doesn’t have much say in bonds between his teammates. But Jonny has a, a _thing_ about bonds, and Patrick had spent two hours on Tuesday hoping that Tazer would swoop in and put a stop to it, somehow. 

“I was thinking,” says Jonny. He sips his drink, batting the umbrella out of the way with his free hand.

“I fucking know you were thinking, Jesus,” says Patrick. “Thinking what?”

“Thinking, what if there was a better candidate to bond you to? Someone more your age, with a similar contract. Better long-term value for the team, you know?”

Patrick says, “But there isn’t one.” 

Jonny straightens and gives a little wave with his drink. “Me,” he says.

 Patrick stares at him. Patrick’s drunk, and Jonny’s drunk, but neither of them are drunk enough to think that you can bond with someone when you aren’t compatible. 

“But. We’re not—” says Patrick, “we’re not compatible?” 

“ _Exactly_ ,” says Jonny, sounding incredibly smug for someone who isn’t making any fucking sense.

They had a conversation about this topic once before, back in 2008. That time, it was Jonny reminding Patrick they weren’t compatible, as if he’d forgotten for a moment.

“Well, you don’t want to bond with anyone, right?” Jonny asks. 

“Not really.” Patrick has thought about it a lot, what with being in a career that pushes for it. Early on, with less to fuck up, he might’ve gone for it. He knows he wouldn’t bond for any other reason. 40% of Americans never do, according to the latest census.

“So it’s perfect,” says Jonny. “I don’t want you to bond either. Hockey bonds are worthless.”

And Patrick has heard this one before. Part of it is about how the chaos of a hockey rink is a bad platform for making full use of a bond, and Patrick can sort of see that. The rest is about The True Meaning of the Bond, and Patrick sees no point in getting metaphysical about this shit.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Patrick. “Hockey bonds are subverting the true purpose of a bond, which is to share everything with another person, not share bits and pieces in pursuit of some goal like scoring points.”

Jonny blinks. “I didn’t know anybody was listening to me that time in Boston,” he says.

Patrick always listens to Jonny though, is the thing. Or he tries to.

“Well, I know what your point is,” he says. “But I have no idea what that has to do with bonding to you. And there’s the team to consider.”

Jonny waves his glass in a dismissal of the team. “A bond doesn’t guarantee us more points or anything. If you look at pre- and post-bond Corsi, for instance…”

Patrick has heard that before too, this one from more people than just Jonny. All hockey bonds are not created equal, and people on Twitter like to argue about it.

“…So it shouldn’t be that hard to fake it,” Jonny is saying when Patrick tunes back in.

Wait. What? 

“ _Fake_ it?” Patrick repeats.

“Fake a bond.” Jonny nods like it’s obvious. “Me and you. We wouldn’t have to tell everyone, you know.”

“I…we can’t fake a bond,” says Patrick. “I mean, what? That’s insane. And we _would_ have to tell everyone, they’d send us on a fucking media tour for it, are you kidding?”

“Not if we told them we weren’t doing it for hockey.”

When Patrick looks back blankly, Jonny continues, “You know, as a friends thing. Friends bond all the time. We always planned to do it, but we didn’t tell anyone because we didn’t think we were ready yet. They won’t make us talk all about our personal lives.”

Patrick isn’t so sure, but that’s beside the point. “Who cares? It would never work anyway, because _I can’t read your mind._ ” 

Jonny shrugs. “We both played with bonded guys in juniors. Did they really look any different? Hockey bonds are pretty much meaningless off the ice. Everybody just figures out how to ignore it as best they can.”

And oh, does Jonny _hate_ that. His face twitches as he says it. 

Patrick rubs between his eyes. He has the beginnings of a headache. This is a poor time and place for a discussion featuring this level of crazy. 

“And on the ice?” he asks.

“We’ll just be one of those pairings like Bozak and Kessel,” says Jonny. 

Everyone argues about whether their bond does the Leafs any good, and they’re definitely bonded for real. But, Patrick thinks, there’s a bigger problem. “How do we get it certified?”

“Oh, I’ll handle that,” says Jonny. “I know people who can sort that out. It’s been done before.”

“Really?” Patrick hasn’t heard any such thing. “Is this to do with your little anti-bond clique?” 

“The HBA,” Jonny corrects. They’re not really anti-hockey bonds, because that’d be about as popular as anti-contact. They mainly advocate for stricter rules on bonding prospects. There’s been some shit that’s gone down in that area, Patrick knows it’s a problem, but the kids are eighteen and he doesn’t see what he’s supposed to do about it. But maybe Tazer’s been off fake-bonding draft picks during his summers.

That…well. That makes this feel way too close to a possibility, and Patrick can’t have that. Jonny has already started talking about it like it’s settled.

“Nope,” says Patrick. “Never gonna work. Even if we could somehow make everyone believe we could read each others minds—which I doubt—nobody’s gonna believe that we kept the compatibility secret all these years.” He starts walking back toward the bar. He’s feeling way too sober.

“Uh, about that,” says Jonny. 

Patrick turns back with a sense of foreboding. 

“I, uh, know they would believe us? Management, I mean.” Jonny looks down at the umbrella wobbling in his glass. “Because they already do.”

“What,” says Patrick. Jonny fucking did not do what that implies.

“I told them,” says Jonny. “Yesterday.”

Jonny fucking _did_.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Patrick half-yells. “You told management that you and me were compatible and going to bond this season? Without _asking_ me?”

“I—only the compatible part.” Jonny fiddles with the umbrella in his glass, not meeting Patrick’s eyes. “I had to get you out of it somehow, you know?”

“No, I don’t,” says Patrick. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“I didn’t tell them we were gonna bond!” Jonny says. “It just. Uh. Now they’re assuming stuff.”

Well, now Patrick knows why Jonny got so drunk. He doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with him, though. 

The problem is, this bad idea is pretty appealing. Being fake-bonded to Jonathan Toews would still mean _not being bonded_. Not to Sharpy and not to anyone else. And if Jonny’s right about it being easy to fake, then nobody will bother him about getting bonded in the future. He’d be safe.

But Jonny has got to be wrong. Patrick only has his word for it that this is even possible. He remembers watching some movie where the characters tried it, and it went horribly wrong. That one had Nicolas Cage in it, too. Career bonds and absurd movie scenarios are basically the only times you’d have any incentive to fake it, and they test you when it’s important. 

Maybe they wouldn’t test it, Patrick tries not to believe, and does anyway. Maybe Jonny’s right, and they’d accept the certification and let them go on their way, because they’d be Kane and Toews in a personal bond and that’s something people don’t pry into. Career bonds and Jonny’s complaints aside, personal bonds are still held sacred.

“I can’t fucking believe you,” Patrick mutters. 

“I didn’t mean to,” says Jonny. “It was just—they said you’d said yes, and it was all I could think of. I can fess up tomorrow. But. If you—”

Patrick looks at him for a moment. “Just—don’t do anything yet. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“They want to meet with us tomorrow afternoon.”

Of course they do. Patrick sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “Okay. Tomorrow morning. In which case, I’m calling it a night.” He walks back down the sidewalk. 

 

*

Patrick’s phone is ringing. His fumbling serves only to knock it off the nightstand, so he drags himself out of bed. He’s so tired he feels like it shouldn’t even be light out, but it’s almost 9am.

It’s Jonny.

“So,” he says. Patrick holds his breath, because he doesn’t know what he wants to hear and he’s terrified whatever it is will be wrong.

“You still in?” says Jonny, and Patrick exhales slowly. He tells himself he still doesn’t know.

“We need to talk about the practical side of this,” Patrick says. “How are we gonna convince people?”

“They won’t need anything more convincing than the paperwork,” says Jonny. “It’s not like the team’s going to verify it themselves, too inconvenient.” 

It feels like a hell of a risk. If they kept this up for the rest of their careers—shit, Patrick has as much trouble imagining that as imagining a real bond.

He sits on the edge of his bed and looks out the window. It’s very grey today, probably colder, too. “And what do we tell people?” he asks. “The team, I mean, and, you know. Family. Friends.”

“That this is the right time,” says Jonny. “We’re older, we have different priorities now. That we didn’t want to be pushed into hockey bonds. Keep it as simple as possible, tell as few people as possible.”

Patrick supposes it might work. The team wouldn’t ask why Jonny had bonded for friendship instead of romance, not after Anna. Anna and Jonny were bond compatible, they dated, and everyone thought they were heading for a romantic bond. Then one week, Anna went and bonded with a 65-year-old American Literature professor, and she and Jonny weren’t dating anymore. The rest of the team has a tacit agreement to never speak of this.

“Okay,” he says. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

Because the thing is, if he goes down, this way Tazer’s going down with him. The Hawks couldn’t have that, right?

 

*

Patrick thinks management is being really polite about this, all things considered. They’ve just discovered they’ve had not one, but two sets of compatible players on the team all along. If the roles were reversed, Patrick thinks he’d be shouting. Maybe they got that out of their systems earlier. Bowman in particular is being very…smiley. Even a little fatherly, which is disturbing.

“I completely understand where you’re coming from,” he’s saying in response to Jonny’s somewhat strained request for privacy. “A bond with a personal component should absolutely be handled with discretion. We’re completely behind you on this.” He casts another of his reassuring smiles in Patrick’s direction. Patrick wonders if he’s coming across that worried. This is so sudden, he’s barely nervous yet.

“That’s good,” says Jonny. Jonny’s nervous, so it’s probably more for his benefit. Patrick glances over at him, and flicks him a tiny smile when they make eye contact. 

“That said, it can’t stay a total secret either,” Bowman continues. “What are you planning to tell the team?”

Jonny, inexplicably, looks to Patrick for that. Patrick already told him he wasn’t answering any of the questions, but Jonny’s not talking, so he says, “Just—that it’s a personal bond? We get along well, and the timing was never right before.” Jonny’s just going to have to be happy with that.

Bowman nods slowly. “Okay, that’s fine by us. Any major developments, you run them by us, alright?”

They nod, and the discussion moves on to practical details. Jonny, in his chair, is relaxing inch by inch.

 

Pat Brisson is on the scene for the legal niceties. There’s not much to do with contracts because it’s not technically a hockey bond, but these things all need some oversight. Patrick wonders how Jonny got him here this quickly. When Patrick’s about to leave the office, Brisson gestures for him to stay behind a moment. He looks toward Jonny’s departing back, then to Brisson. Brisson shakes his head. 

“I just want a minute alone with you, Patrick.” He walks to the door and shuts it. “I want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

“We—” Patrick starts, and Brisson cuts him off.

“You,” he says. “I’m asking _you_. Jonathan Toews is not a fan of hockey bonds.”

“I—yeah? I know how he is,” Patrick tries.

 Brisson watches him for a moment, mouth set.

“If I were you,” he says finally, “I would think long and hard about whether this is in my best interests. I’m sure Jonny thinks now that all this bonding will be fine when it’s a personal thing and when he has control over it, but it might not work out that way.”

“And—what?” says Patrick.

“You’re still on the ice together plenty of the time. You put it together.”

“He wouldn’t do anything that would hurt the team,” says Patrick, because Brisson’s crazy if he thinks Jonny would—push him off the team, or something, if this was real.

“I trust Jonny,” Patrick says. It’s not a lie.

“Okay,” says Brisson, “and I trust the two of you to make this decision. I just wanted to check.”

But Patrick eyes Brisson a little worriedly as they leave. He’s the first person who’s been suspicious of their motives, and he probably won’t be the last.

Christ, Patrick hopes Jonny knows what he’s doing.

 

*

The morning of the season opener, Patrick takes a moment lying in bed to see if he can’t get into the headspace of a just-bonded guy.

He’s not sure he can. Jonny’s down at the other end of the hallway; too close and they’d be in each other’s heads the whole night. Patrick wouldn’t feel him now, anyway. 

But he’d be feeling something. Excitement, maybe? Stress, for sure. He’d be worrying whether it would work out well. He guesses that has some real life parallels he can draw on. “Tell the truth as much as you can,” Jonny said, because he’s apparently an expert on lying now.

Hardly anyone’s eating breakfast when he heads down. Patrick wonders if everyone got up hours early, like that could make the season start sooner. Shawzy’s there, all alone at the corner table, so Patrick heads over.

“’Sup,” says Shawzy. “So like, how’s your Tazer thing?”

“Fine,” says Patrick. “Everything’s fine.”

“Cool.” Shawzy nods. “Gotta be weird though, right? Does he sound the same in your thoughts?”

“Mostly.” He probably would, and even if he wouldn’t, it’d be way too much work emulating some fringe case. 

“A-ha,” says Shawzy, “mostly,” and nods sagely. Patrick doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

 

It’s off to the rink for morning skate, and after that everyone’s too intent on their pregame routines for much conversation. Schedules are strictly adhered to, pre-arranged meals eaten. Tape this stick perfectly and the gods will be on your side this year, maybe. Now is not the time to test a lack of faith in rituals.

They’re going to have to change something, though. Bonds do their thing way back in the part of your brain that believes in magic, and that comes out in your superstitions. Patrick figures he and Jonny can make something up; by the end of the year it’ll probably be the realest part of it.

If this lasts the year. Or even the game. Jonny’s across the locker room looking down at his gloves like he doesn’t know what they are. Patrick wonders if he’s finally realizing what he’s gotten himself into.

 

Q puts them together a little more than Patrick would’ve expected based on practice. Maybe it’s the start of a trend, or maybe it’s just Q being Q.

And Tazer’s brilliant, Tazer’s ready to go. He gets the puck to Patrick with the sickest little no-look pass you ever saw, twenty seconds left in the second. Top shelf, short side, Benn and Lehtonen both flail for it in vain. Tazer and Bicks knock him up against the boards, shouting their approval.

The third turns into one of those games of keep-away that probably annoys the shit out of everyone in the stands, and it certainly does Patrick, but they hold on for the W and the two points. There are worse ways to start a season.

The locker room is cheerfully normal, guys settling back into their grooves in all the ways they hadn’t yet during the preseason. Tazer’s ready with compliments and back-slaps, and he hits Patrick on the shoulder as he walks past. A couple of the guys turn and look at them who wouldn’t normally, but Patrick’s too pleased, too tired and too much a season-opener-goal-scorer to care about anything other than hockey.

Getting off the plane late that night in Chicago, Jonny nudges Patrick with his shoulder. 

“See?” he says. “Not that hard.”

They share a secret grin. If this fake bond shit is good games and solid passes and Shawzy asking a couple random questions, well, Patrick can deal with it.

 

*

And then they play the Sabres.

It’s not the _game_ that’s the problem. The Sabres don’t appear to have dragged themselves up from the depths over the summer, and Patrick gets an assist out of a puck-chasing catastrophe courtesy of the Sabres’ D-men. The game ends 5-2 and is damn good fun for everyone at the United Center.

No, the problem is that it’s Saturday. It being Saturday—and the beginning of the season, and a win—means people have the time and inclination to celebrate. Which means that some people take it upon themselves to consume substantial amounts of alcohol, and in turn that means: lowered inhibitions.

Patrick thought people weren’t going to bother him and Jonny about the bond. Well, he was fucking wrong.

“But what’s it _like_ ,” says Saader. They’re crowded up in the biggest corner booth, the table loaded with steak and beer, and what Patrick would like is to be allowed to enjoy it. 

“It’s fine,” says Patrick, and shovels in another mouthful before Saader can get the next question off. Jonny’s down at the other end of the table and he looks shell-shocked. Serves him fucking right, and he should’ve known better than to sit anywhere near Sharpy.

“Well, _yeah_ ,” says Saader. “Of course it’s fine, it’s fucking awesome is what it is. I can’t believe you guys waited this long. That assist in Dallas, holy shit, man.”

Patrick lowers his fork slowly. “People do that all the time. You don’t need a bond to do that.”

“ _I’d_ need a bond to do that,” says Crow morosely, on Saad’s other side.

“You’re a fucking goalie,” says Patrick. “You’d need a bond to be able to skate.”

“I don’t think a bond would help with that,” Shawzy comments from Patrick’s left, because Patrick was blinded by hunger when he sat down here. “It might make your partner fall more, though.”

“Shut up,” says Patrick. “You don’t know anything about bonds.” Patrick, on the other hand, knows many things about bonds. He read the whole first page of the google results, including the summary of that movie with the dragons. And he vaguely remembers the mandatory seminars he took in high school and with the Knights.

“I do, though,” says Saader. “Like how you’ll be more aware of your partner’s movements, but you can’t actually control their body. I looked it up.”

Oh no. Patrick doesn’t have an advantage if Manchild knows how to use google too. “Of course you can’t control bodies, that would be stupid,” he says. “But what’s it to you? You wanna bond with someone?”

“Nah,” says Saader. “Shawzy, though…”

Shawzy sighs into his drink. “I’m not compatible with anyone except for old ladies at Asian grocery stores.”

“We can’t all be Kaner here,” says Crow. “You and Tazer, shit. I wouldn’t have hidden it.”

“It’s not a hockey bond,” Patrick feels compelled to say, because it _isn’t_. “Jonny doesn’t like hockey bonds.” Jonny glances over just then and meets Patrick’s eyes. Patrick makes a face. If Jonny was in his head right now, listening in on this conversation, he would hopefully be grateful to Patrick for defending his position re: bonds.

“Doesn’t matter what Jonny wants,” says Crow. “It’s gonna be a hockey bond unless one of you quits tomorrow, who cares what the contracts say. You know how they are.”

“We talked to management about it,” says Patrick. “It’s _not_ a hockey bond, they told us they understood and everything.”

“It’s a hockey bond,” Crow repeats. “You watch.”

“Them playing on the same line doesn’t have to make it a _hockey_ bond,” Shawzy pipes up. “I mean, there are more important things than hockey, right?”

“Wrong,” says Duncs suddenly from across the table. “And what would you know about it?”

“Well…” Shawzy starts, but is interrupted by a sudden clamor from the other end of the table.

“Hah! Kaner!” Seabs shouts. “You tell ‘em what Tazer just said!”

Sharpy, next to him, is doubled over laughing at god knows what. Jonny’s got a deer-in-the-headlights look that he’d better wipe off his face before he gives the whole show away.

“I refuse to repeat that,” says Patrick, nose in the air, and it couldn’t have been too wrong because Seabs laughs and gives Jonny a shove. Jonny still looks freaked, so Patrick rolls his eyes at him.

But: yeah. They’re gonna have to work on this. 

“What’d he say?” Saader demands. 

“I’m not your fucking eavesdropping tool,” says Patrick. “The first rule of bonds is that you can never use them for evil.”

“Really?” says Saader. He can’t have googled that much. Maybe he took a break to watch the dragon movie and stopped there.

“No rules,” says Crow. “Well, there are some laws.” He pauses. “They wouldn’t get in your way that much.” Patrick is glad that nobody bonds their goalies.

He looks over at Jonny again. He’s laughing at Sharpy, who’s making grandiose and extremely bizarre gestures. If Patrick could read Jonny’s mind he would know what that arm wave meant. Or maybe he wouldn’t, but he’d know Jonny’s best guess. 

Jonny looks up then and catches Patrick watching. He raises his eyebrows, so Patrick raises his, twice in quick succession. Jonny gets that expression on his face where he’s thinking you’re an idiot but doesn’t really mind. Everyone on the team can recognize that expression, no telepathy necessary. Jonny’s happy, two good games and last season well and truly over. 

“That’s weird, man,” says Saader. “Your little silent conversations. You two were already weird, and now you’re gonna be really freaky, aren’t you?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so.” Patrick looks down at his plate. Nothing has changed, and still Saader’s seeing everything differently. He glances up and Jonny’s the one watching, this time. That’s something that’s changed, maybe. Before, Patrick had been making sure not to look so much.

“It’s totally cool though,” says Saader. “There were a couple bonded guys when I was in Saginaw, but they weren’t anywhere near as good as you two. Huh, Shawzy?”

“What? Oh, yeah.” Shawzy’s been distracted all evening, staring off into space with an especially stupid expression, even for him. “I can pick up some tips, you know, for when we get a prospect I’m compatible with.”

“I didn’t know Tianshu from Hong Kong Market was draft eligible,” says Saader.

 

*

“They believe it,” says Patrick. “Everyone fucking _believes_ it. They believe _us_.”

It’s Sunday afternoon, and Jonny is at Patrick’s condo for an emergency meeting. Patrick had woken up from some dream about him and Jonny being given a mind-reading test by an angry Erica. He’d called Jonny in a cold sweat and told him to come over or he’d call up Bowman and confess.

Jonny took his damn sweet time getting here, citing other concerns such as “the gym” and “meals.” Now he’s standing by the kitchen counter with his arms crossed while Patrick paces up and down the length of the living room.

“That was the idea, for them to believe it,” says Jonny blandly.

Patrick spins on his heel and starts back. “But they’re so. So _enthusiastic._ ”

Jonny does grimace at that. “They’ll get over it.”

“They’ll see through it, is what they’ll do,” says Patrick. “They’re already coming up with shit that’s gonna trip us up sooner or later.” It’s a minefield. They’ll dodge a question one too many times, and eventually someone will work out that nothing’s changed. Even the stupidity of hockey players has its limits.

“What you did last night worked,” says Jonny.

“But sometimes it won’t.” Patrick pauses for a minute to frown out the window. That’s a big city out there; eventually, maybe sooner rather than later, there’ll be people in those buildings who know that Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are bonded. And then it’s going to be a _thing_ , probably to an extent to which no thing has ever been a thing before. Or at least not in Chicago hockey in the 21st century.

“I don’t know,” says Patrick. “Maybe we should end this now.”

Jonny’s just shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not now. Not—at this point in the season.”

And that’s part of what’s bothering Patrick, because this season is feeling so good. It’s like everything’s snapped back into place a little faster, a little easier than in past years. Everyone’s confident and excited, and telling the truth about this bond could run this team right off the rails. But Patrick wonders if maybe it’s best to do it now and give themselves time to get over it. It’d probably leave a sour enough taste in the mouths of management that they’d forget about the Sharpy idea.

Patrick doesn’t want this season to be do or die on the back of a nonexistent bond. And not, for god’s sake, not with Jonny. There are a million different ways that would be fucked up.

“You’re worrying too much,” says Jonny. “Okay, so they’re asking questions about it. That just means we have to plan in advance a little.”

“No planning will let me read your mind,” Patrick says. They can practice more together on the ice, sure. He thinks hockey is the easy part here, because there’s not much that’s _yes, no, here’s a set of explicit instructions._ Not in Patrick’s head, and probably not in the heads of those kids in London who got split up because they couldn’t do shit together. Some people can’t make it work all that well. 

“We can arrange stuff, you know, so it looks like it,” Jonny suggests. “Codes and stuff.”

“Codes?” Patrick echoes. “What, like secret signals?”

“Yeah, or stuff we say. We should have a warning system, you know, for when one of us wants the other one to be careful not to mess it up.”

“Jesus,” says Patrick. They’re gonna be using that signal a lot. “What if it’s more specific, though?”

“Um—” Jonny pauses— “maybe Morse code?”

“What, like with ships and stuff?”

“It’s dots and dashes for letters, like—” Jonny suddenly reaches out and snags Patrick’s left arm. He presses his index and middle finger just above Patrick’s wrist, and gives one sharp push, then a longer one. “That’s the letter A,” says Jonny proudly.

“Ow,” says Patrick, shaking out his arm. “I get the idea, but that’s gonna take half an hour to say one sentence.”

“Abbreviations?” Jonny says. “And we can use other methods. There’s gotta be stuff on the internet, right? Let’s do some research and meet back here on Tuesday after practice.”

Patrick is almost positive that practice is optional, and maybe they should be using it to practice here instead. He doesn’t rate his chances of convincing Jonny of that very highly.

“Fine,” he says. “Okay.” It’s not—he doesn’t feel good, saying it. That’s gonna be Tazer invading his space, leaving fingertip bruises on his arm and telling him to try harder. There’s _nothing_ to feel good about, really.

Jonny nods a little. “It’s gonna be fine,” he says. “Neither of us is gonna give it away.”

He looks so—tall, standing next to the counter. It comes up to a totally different spot on his body than on Patrick’s. Patrick wonders suddenly about Anna, and about whether Jonny’s changed his mind about some things. The team thinks Jonny has given up on romantic bonds. Patrick isn’t so sure. If this lasts the next few weeks, maybe Patrick will even feel like asking.

“I guess so,” he says. “Gonna have to avoid Manchild for a few weeks, maybe.”

“Him?” asks Jonny. “I thought it’d be Shaw.”

Patrick isn’t sure if Jonny knows about Shawzy’s grocery store adventures, and he’s not about to betray confidences. “Shawzy’s gone off bonds a little.” 

“Oh,” says Jonny. He looks around the living room and the kitchen, so non-judgmental that it’s really judgmental, though Patrick doesn’t mention it. “We’ll meet here, then?” Maybe Jonny doesn’t want to poison his condo with fake bond practice. It might sully his interior decorator’s vision.

“Sure,” says Patrick, because there’s nothing wrong with this place, Jonny’s stupid problem with it notwithstanding. It’s only because Jonny hasn’t yet learned that couches are movable. “That’s fine.” Patrick sighs.

“We can practice,” says Jonny. “C’mon, it’ll be kinda fun?”

And Patrick realizes he has done a terrible thing: he’s turned this into something you can practice. With drills. God, he is so _fucked_. 

 

*

“You two,” says Q, waving his index finger between Patrick and Jonny. “Over there, let’s go!”

Patrick doesn’t know why he came to Tuesday practice. Some practices are fun, and some practices make you wish you died before you were born. His legs hurt and he is full of regret. And now there’s this bond shit on top of it.

He and Jonny exchange a look. Now is one of those times it’s supposed to be weird and pretty, and maybe it won’t be.

Bozak and Kessel don’t always get it right, thinks Patrick, when he lunges for the puck and misses. No one accuses them of faking it. (They just argue about them non-stop anyway.)

“Hey, watch it,” says Jonny, like it was because Patrick wasn’t paying attention rather than because he had no idea where the fuck Jonny was. That’s the story they’re selling, he reminds himself. It’s not Jonny being an ass.

He gets the puck the next time, puts it right where he means to. Jonny looks unwillingly impressed.

“That’s more like it,” says Q, watching from the sidelines. “I want to see you doing that every time. Now go!”

They don’t do it every time. Not even close, Patrick gets fucking sick of backtracking for a puck that Jonny put somewhere no good, he’d never do that in a game, is he trying to make it _easy_?

Patrick gives him a look on the last pass he’d left behind. Tazer’s frowning, stick pressed against his chin. The next two rounds are better. Still, it’s not weirdly pretty. It’s mostly just a mess. Q’s got his thoughtful expression on when Patrick steps off the ice, but he shrugs a little when he says, “Early days.”

 

It’s early days, Patrick thinks too, when he lets Jonny into the condo. They’ve got the time and management’s understanding. They’ll reach a point where Patrick looks up at Jonny and thinks nothing he hadn’t been thinking already. Between 2008 and now is a forever in hockey time.

“Did you memorize it?” asks Jonny.

The Morse code, Patrick remembers. Yeah, that’s the first thing he did. He nods.

“It’s not enough,” he says. “For the specifics, I haven’t found anything better, but the general stuff—”

“Yeah,” says Jonny. “Yeah, I know, we need the cues for the general stuff. We need things we can say, or do.” He looks around the condo. He’s standing by the kitchen counter again, that’s maybe the least offensive area for him, because it looks not too unlike his own place. Patrick wishes he would get over this irrational hatred.

“Goddammit, Kaner,” Jonny says, and stomps over to the couch. Fuck, Patrick knew this would happen. Jonny’s learned couches are movable after all.

Jonny grabs one end and starts dragging it around. The couch normally faces the corner, because that’s where the TV and the fireplace are, _thank you very much_ , but Jonny’s got a thing with the view where he thinks Patrick’s wasting it. He doesn’t get how putting the view at your back while you watch reality TV is a fucking symbolic gesture, or at least it’s a perfectly good excuse for one. It seems like half the time the view is just a cloud, anyway.

“I’m not gonna sit and stare at the wall,” Jonny says when Patrick glares at him.

They settle on either ends of the couch. There are no clouds today. The lake’s really blue and it’s distracting, no good for fake telepathy practice at all. Patrick has a thing he’s imagined about this, Jonny and the view. He’s never said so.

“We need some code words,” says Jonny. “Ways to warn each other, words that we’ll notice when we hear them.”

“Octopus,” Patrick says, since it’s the first thing he thought of. He’d notice if Jonny started talking about octopuses—octopi? all the time, or ever.

“That’d be suspicious,” says Jonny. “Something more common.”

“Backcheck.”

“Not _too_ common.”

Patrick gets his phone out of his pocket.

“What’s that for?” Jonny demands.

“Thesaurus.” Patrick searches _serious_ and scrolls down the page till it starts giving him weird suggestions: big league, four-star, super colossal. “Maybe you can start calling things super when you want to warn me off,” he says. 

Jonny shrugs and says yes.

“For serious?” says Patrick. 

“It has to be something we wouldn’t normally say,” Jonny mutters. He’s got a hunted look in his eyes, like he’s imagining talking to certain people. “We shouldn’t have to use it that much. They’ll get over it pretty quick, I’m sure they will.”

“Uh-huh,” says Patrick. 

Jonny leans over suddenly and grabs him by the wrist. Patrick jerks away automatically, startled.

“Next step,” says Jonny, not letting go. “Can you tell what this means?” He presses.

Patrick tries to shake him off, Jonny not being someone who knows how to be gentle, and surely this isn’t the best method anyway.

“You should, like, tap on a glass or something,” he says. “Or else we’ll have to be next to each other all the time.”

“We should be, though,” says Jonny. “Then nothing like Saturday can happen in the first place.”

“What _did_ you say to Seabs and Sharpy, anyway?” Patrick asks curiously.

“Nothing.” Maybe it’s a good thing they’re facing the windows, with nice, natural light to illuminate the red in Jonny’s cheeks. 

“Tell me something in Morse code,” says Patrick. Jonny’s still got his arm hostage, stretching out to Jonny’s end of the couch. They’re gonna have to sit closer to do it for real; this probably looks insane and it’s not very comfortable. Patrick scoots over one cushion. 

Jonny starts pressing Patrick’s wrist again. Patrick never knew he had such poky fingers. 

“Make it something I don’t know, so I can’t just guess,” Patrick tells him.

Jonny stops for a moment. Then he starts again, quicker. I-A-S— shit, what was that? E, miss, M, miss, M-O-M— mom? The hell? A—and then he loses track entirely. Jonny lets go and looks at him expectantly.

“What are you talking about your mom for?” Patrick asks, on the off-chance he wasn’t wrong.

“She knows more about bonds than anyone else I know,” says Jonny, “so it seemed like she’d know the most about how to fake one, right?”

“Wait, you told your mom about this?” Patrick stares at him.

“That’s what I just _said,_ ” says Jonny, with a gesture toward Patrick’s wrist.

“Yeah, I didn’t get any of it except for ‘mom’. What the fuck, you _told_ her?”

Jonny shrugs a little and doesn’t look at Patrick. “C’mon, there’s no way we were faking this with our families.”

“Yeah, but.” Giving them a heads-up doesn’t mean _involving_ them, and, “You should’ve told me before you talked about it to your _mom._ ”

“I’m telling you now,” Jonny says. He grabs Patrick’s arm again. “Let’s try this again.”

“We should do taps,” says Patrick. “Something less painful for me.”

“Oh.” Jonny eases his grip, but Jonny being gentler is—still not gentle. Patrick’s gonna be like the girl in the movie he watched in his Dallas hotel room, with the evil husband and the finger bruises on her arms. It was so bad he hadn’t teared up once.

“We can try other stuff once we get this down,” says Jonny, and digs his fingers in again.

So this is, well. They’re on the couch facing the view and Jonny’s holding onto Patrick and Patrick’s concentration is not that great. He wonders what the hell Andrée said when Jonny told her.

Jonny is telling him—something about a dog. It doesn’t seem particularly meaningful. Patrick thinks the dog’s name is Tot Q, which cannot possibly be right and he must’ve missed or mixed up a letter. Jonny’s going much slower this time, though, so at the end Patrick feels confident reporting back that Jonny’s neighbor has a dog.

“What’s its name?” asks Jonny.

“Um. Tot Q?”

The dog’s name is Tony. Jonny is disgusted. Whatever, Tony is a stupid name for a dog anyway. 

“My turn,” says Patrick. He slides his fingers along the inside of Jonny’s wrist, hovering over where he can feel the pulse jumping under his skin.

“Higher up,” says Jonny. “I’ll feel it better there.”

Jonny probably practiced this on himself or something, because he rolls his eyes at Patrick’s quick H-E-L-L-O and tells him to make it harder. 

So Patrick tells him about all the dog names that are better than Tony, like Winger and Lindy Ruff and also Tot Q. He wonders what he’s going to say to his mom about Jonny.

 

*

If Patrick doesn’t tell his mom about stupid Jonathan Toews bullshit, it won’t be the first time. It will be the third.

The first time was 2008, both of them on the high of stand-out rookie seasons, and Patrick had a crush. He was 19, they were road roomies, there was a limit to how long he could hide it.

When it came down to it, Patrick went all-in. Before, he’d only ever tried confessing his love with some kind of reasonable lead-up. (Megan from 9th grade algebra had appreciated it at the time and regretted it two months later, so to hell with that.)

But Jonny turned out to be more serious about the romantic bond thing than Patrick had expected, and they weren’t compatible. Jonny explained it, frowning and sincere and a little upset. It wasn’t anything to do with _Patrick_. 

Patrick thought he would’ve liked it better if it had just sounded like an excuse to turn him down.

 

The second time was 2011, and it wasn’t really a second time. Patrick was pretty over the whole romantic rejection thing and had decided he wanted a piece of that anyway. Jonny had no problem with casual hookups. But then Jonny met Anna and Patrick didn’t get it. No big deal, his seduction plan hadn’t been _that_ complex, okay. Unlike last time, he hadn’t told Erica, so everything was fine.

 

This might be the stupidest thing that has happened with Jonny, but Patrick thinks there is some precedent.

 

*

Wednesday night they host the Flames. And maybe the Hawks weren’t as prepared as they should’ve been, maybe the Flames are fuelled by the power of Brian Burke’s hair. The first period was scoreless, but now it’s the second period and in the last minute and a half they’ve gone down 2-0. The first goal was Monahan on a breakaway after Smitty forgot how legs worked during the line change, and the second was the Flames’ power play after Shawzy took a stupid penalty. He already took one of those in the first period. 

Shawzy’s down the other end of the bench, though, and Patrick’s right up against a Tazer who’s selling that encouragement to Saader way too hard.

They’re on the ice together next, Q was—not as put-off by yesterday’s performance as he should’ve been, Brodie blocks Patrick’s pass and the Flames take the puck back up the ice. Duncs is a beauty, stops it going 3-0 pretty much all by himself. Then Duncs takes a penalty for hooking, beauty status revoked, although Tazer’s arguing with the ref like it wasn’t fucking blatant.

2nd intermission and they’re all trying to pump themselves up. Q talks generally, no one says a damn thing about him and Tazer, but Patrick feels like he’s bonded to the whole fucking team because he knows they’re all thinking about it. Well, there’s no reason to expect magic this early. Patrick goes out with Sharpy, and what of it? They’ve never needed bonds to get their shit together before.

Hoss is the one who gets them on the board, and the people in the stands wake back up. This Wednesday night crowd’s pretty keen if you give them something worth caring about. It’s not a pretty goal, and it’s kind of shitty hockey, they get a power play and maybe two shots on goal for McGrattan’s slashing efforts. That’s the bulk of Patrick and Jonny’s joint ice time till the waning minutes with the goalie pulled. The fans are shouting. Patrick’s down the right side with Jonny a little ways back and Bicks across the ice. And Jonny wants the puck so bad Patrick can feel it, but he _knows_ Jonny doesn’t really have the opening, that he’s just hoping for it. Patrick passes to Bickell.

Bicks gets his first point of the night before the buzzer sounds. Thank god some people on this team remembered how to play hockey.

Morin scores the GWG 30 seconds into overtime off a fluke bounce. A win’s a win, but Patrick wishes they didn’t play Chelsea Dagger after games that bode bag skates in their future.

 

*

He’s glad the press doesn’t know about the bond, or they wouldn’t be nodding along to the stock phrases about battle and grit. Patrick’s post-game shower is the shortest of the season so far by a good 50%.

He doesn’t get out in time to stop Jonny accosting him in the parking lot. 

“Hey, so uh,” Jonny says. “Lunch tomorrow at my place? We can practice some stuff.”

“Yeah, fine,” Patrick mutters. Right now he just wants to sleep. Probably he’ll dream about bond questions from the media, but if you’re tired enough you can totally have restful nightmares.

“Cool,” says Jonny.

Patrick makes the effort to smile at him, because Jonny said all the right things in the locker room and Patrick was the one with that assist. If there’s anything more to talk about they can talk about it tomorrow, on Jonny’s couch that faces in the proper direction.

 

*

“So you’re definitely coming over for lunch,” is how Jonny starts the phone call the next morning. “We have…kind of an issue.”

Jonny’s refusing to say more, so Patrick’s morning workout isn’t really as focused as it could’ve been, and he doesn’t notice his protein shake is the wrong flavor until he’s had half of it. He gags a bit and powers through.

Jonny’s place is close enough that it takes Patrick more time to get his car into the tiny space available than it does to drive over. Some of the people who live here don’t seem to know what the white lines on the ground are for.

Jonny has food ready when Patrick walks in, and says, “We should eat first,” and _no,_ they absolutely should not.

“Spill,” says Patrick. “Now. Or I’ll—I’ll go out and buy McDonalds for lunch instead, you just watch.”

Jonny sighs. “I talked to Mike this morning. He said they’d like to see us doing something to uh, accelerate our progress with the bond.”

“Excuse me,” says Patrick, “our bond is very fucking accelerated for one that doesn’t exist.”

“They’ve got specialists who’re supposed to help you get accustomed to it faster,” says Jonny, ignoring that and dishing out pasta from a pot. It smells good, because someone other than Jonny did all the work before he stuck in on the stove.

“Yeah, my great-aunt and her bond partner went to one. It turned out that they’d always had opposite opinions on the best way to make sourdough bread, and they kept fighting about it.”

“…Right,” says Jonny. “It’s going to be a little different for hockey players, though. A lot of, like, spatial awareness stuff.” He pauses and pokes at the pasta with his spoon. “Uh, that could get tricky.”

“Are you thinking we should quit, then?” asks Patrick suspiciously. Maybe that’s why he’s especially scowling today, like the food has done something to warrant that glare. Patrick grabs his bowl before Jonny starts beating it with the spoon, or something.

“ _No_ ,” says Jonny, and not like he’s trying to convince himself, so Patrick was wrong. 

Jonny’s thinking about something, hard enough it’s obvious and kind of stressing Patrick out, so he sits at the table and starts eating. Jonny doesn’t move away from the kitchen island counter.

“So, we need to practice that,” says Jonny finally. “They have you do drills, you know, like using telepathy to get into position. You’re supposed to get it so that you don’t have to explain in words. They did this behind-the-scenes thing with football players.”

“Hmm,” is all Patrick says. That sounds pretty impossible without going obviously easy on each other.

“And it hardly even translates to hockey,” Jonny mutters, poking at his food with a fork. “Like, you might think you know where I should be, but you could be wrong.”

“So could you,” Patrick is compelled to say. 

“Yeah, I know, I just mean—” Jonny stops and sighs a little.

Patrick finishes his food and goes and sits on the couch and waits for Jonny. Jonny’s view is pretty similar to his own, just a little lower and closer to the water. Patrick prefers that he gets more of the buildings in the way, can see the traffic in the streets and all the lights at night. There’s nothing like it for pumping yourself up before winter games where it’s dark when you head out. Closer to the lake and half your view’s a black blank if there’s no moonlight. 

 Patrick hears the clink of Jonny’s plate in the sink, but doesn’t turn until he feels Jonny’s weight sink into the couch. Jonny’s got on that grey henley and Patrick feels the pasta unsettled in his stomach. 

“So, I practice throwing a bunch of stuff at you until you can catch most of it, I dunno,” he says.

“Maybe they’ll just have us practice on our own,” says Jonny. “I looked up the place, it’s just an office, they don’t have a gym or anything.”

There are still so many things that can go wrong in an office. “They’re _experts_ , though,” Patrick says. “We’ll fail all the tests.”

“It’s probably not the tests that would trip us up.” Jonny turns toward Patrick, leaning in a little. “Two bonded people sitting on a couch together can read each other’s minds, you don’t _have_ to test that. What they’re gonna test is _how_ we do it.”

“Okay?” Patrick has no idea what he’s getting at.

“They’re like, like marriage counselors, kind of, see? They’re not testing if the relationship exists, they’re looking at the different ways you approach it, where you get confused, how to communicate more clearly. We mainly have to _relate_ to each other like we’re bonded, because that’s what someone like this will notice.”

“Well, okay.” That sounds reasonable enough. “How do we do that?”

Jonny shrugs. 

“Jonny! I thought you had an idea!”

“I’m gonna call my mom about it tonight,” says Jonny.

Patrick drops his head into his heads. Andrée Toews had better be some sort of bond genius.

 

*

Patrick doesn’t know many people his age with bonds. These days, most bonds are between older people, 65-year-olds who are curious and have long since made peace with their pasts and their personal failings. There are the people who bonded with the girl one row over in 3rd period geometry, sure, but most of those pairs make sure to never live in the same town again. Hammer says he’s never going back to Jönköping while she’s there.

So Patrick doesn’t _know_ how he and Jonny are supposed to relate, and there’s something off about googling what your life’s supposed to be like. And so when Saader asks what Jonny’s thinking at practice—Jonny on the other side of the ice staring hard at the blade of his stick, he hasn’t moved in over a minute—Patrick has to make shit up.

“He’s thinking in French,” Patrick says. “See that face? That’s his French face. He’s thinking about Winnipeg.” 

“Wait, is _that_ why he makes that face?” Saader looks delighted. 

Patrick’s pretty sure Jonny makes that face because he has an unusually low awareness of what his nose is doing, or something. Patrick nods vehemently; he’ll tell Jonny later.

“But you don’t speak French,” says Saader.

“Yeah, but it’s like—I know what he means, just not the specific words. It’s really annoying.” Patrick did google that one, watched a whole youtube video about multilingual bond pairings. Some people liked it better, but Patrick thinks he’d be like the guy who got headaches when his partner got all Chinese on him.

“Jets suck!” Saader shouts across the rink. Jonny jerks his head up, looking startled as fuck. Patrick tries to create an explanatory expression by scrunching his nose up and down, but Jonny just gives him a weird look.

“Get in the fucking line, Saader,” says Jonny, because they’re forming a queue for a drill. 

 

*

The bond specialist has an office in a downtown highrise. It’s a very pricey looking setup, with one of the nicest waiting rooms Patrick’s ever been in. There’s a huge fishtank along one wall and he thinks that’s pretty cool. Jonny just looks bored, though it’s only been about forty-five seconds.

Mike booked them in with some woman named Helena. She’s apparently worked with hockey players before, up in Guelph with their junior team. Patrick supposes she’s since moved on to bigger and better things, judging by the surroundings, but is willing to take them on for the right price.

The wait isn’t a long one, which is good, since they’d both have exhausted themselves with much more of the fidgeting.

Helena welcomes them into her office with a smile. She’s tall, with long dark hair, and Patrick’s glad Jonny can’t read his mind because Jonny’d probably be judging him for thinking she’s pretty hot, even though she’s around his mom’s age. He feels Jonny’s eyes on him; maybe Jonny can read his mind about some things.

Anyway, the office isn’t big enough to play football in. Score.

It’s surprisingly small, actually. It has a big window in one wall overlooking the city, and the others are lined with bookcases, crowding them in close. There are candles on the desk and the room smells like vanilla. Patrick and Jonny have to share a couch—no, a loveseat. He sinks far into the cushions when he sits. Maybe it’s supposed make them feel intimate. Vulnerable is a better word, in this case.

Helena brushes up on the details of their situation, more so they know she knows what’s going on; she’s obviously already quite familiar with them. She’s sitting across from them, notebook open on her lap. The desk to her left is cluttered with all sorts of objects, including a random tennis ball that’s making Patrick nervous. He really hopes there aren’t any drills.

“So, to get a baseline,” she says, “we’re going to start with a very common exercise.” She extracts two pads of paper from the hodgepodge on the desk, and a couple pens. “You’re going to take five minutes to write down your thoughts in two columns: Patrick’s thoughts, and Jonny’s thoughts. To ensure you have the strongest possible connection, you should be touching somewhere, making contact with the other’s skin. I suggest taking off your shoes.”

Patrick reaches down automatically. Fuck, they’re maybe gonna give the game away right here. They’ll end up with two totally different sets of notes, and Helena will know that something isn’t right. Also, Patrick doesn’t want to touch Jonny’s feet for five minutes. Ew.

Jonny says, “So what’s the object of the exercise?”

“Right after a bond, it’s a very big change for your brain to deal with,” says Helena. “People have a tendency to confuse their thoughts and their partner’s, particularly when they’re in close contact. This exercise can give us an idea of how much bleed-over there is between the two of you, and then we can take steps to address it.”

Jonny nods. He’s got his jaw set like he’s heading out on the ice down 3-1 in the final minute of the third. Jonny is planning how he’s going to win this.

Jonny asks about the difference between making contact directly and through clothing, which is irrelevant, so: Jonny’s buying them a little time. Patrick watches the clock on the shelf behind Helena. They have nearly 50 minutes to go. 

Tell the truth as much as you can, Jonny told him last week. Patrick thinks they can work with it. He gives Jonny a very slight nod when Helena hands the pads over. They can do this.

“No cheating, I’ll be watching,” she says. “The trick is to concentrate, so you should hardly be looking at your own writing, let alone his.” She waits a moment, then says, “Go.”

Patrick turns the pad sideways and draws a line down the center. Left for him, right for Jonny. He thinks about the truth.

Well, this is stressing him out. Jonny’s tense too. Jonny’s worrying about how the bond will affect the team. Jonny thinks they can win at bonds but he probably doubts Patrick’s commitment. Patrick thinks Jonny must’ve known it was always going to end up being like a hockey bond, and he’s probably proving a point to himself about that. Patrick doesn’t know how to write that in a way that doesn’t tell Helena the whole story, so he just puts _wants to prove himself with bond_ under Jonny’s thoughts. 

Jonny’s foot is cold. Patrick wonders what Helena does if her clients turn out to be foot fetishists. He writes that down on the lefthand column.

Patrick wants to check the clock but he thinks Helena will tell him off for it. He writes that down under both their columns. He starts thinking about the Preds game then, because there was a long delay during the third where they took forever to set the clock right. What would Jonny think about that game? Positive, captainly thoughts, probably.

“Time’s up,” says Helena.

Patrick surveys his pad. He didn’t really look while he wrote, like Helena said to, and the result is that it’s partly illegible where a few Jonny notes crowd into the margins.

“Now, switch pads,” says Helena. “Read through them carefully, and make note of anything that seems wrong, or out of place. After that, if you’re comfortable, we can look at them together.”

Patrick and Jonny exchange glances. Well, that’s an easier out than they expected. Patrick looks down at Jonny’s notepad.

Jonny put Patrick on the left, too. Probably because Patrick’s to his left on the couch. Jonny starts off the same way Patrick does: concerned about the bond, on-ice performance, so Jonny had the same idea. Keep it simple, and all. Patrick remembers where he didn’t, but then, halfway down Patrick’s column: _what about foot fetishists?_ Patrick can’t laugh with Helena watching.

Jonny’s own column is a lot shorter than Patrick’s. He just put little quote marks on the lines next to a lot of the Patrick thoughts—the ones about the game and stuff. He put _wondering how much time is left_ in Patrick’s column with no quotes in his own, and he didn’t say anything about proving points about hockey bonds.

But when Helena asks them if they’d let her have a look, they both shrug and hand their notes over. Patrick hopes there isn’t something glaringly wrong that they missed.

Helena nods to herself and makes notes of her own. Her eyebrows twitch once; Patrick thinks she’s looking at Jonny’s column on himself.

“This is about what I’d expect at this stage,” she says. “You’re getting the general ideas, but it’s very, _very_ disorganized.”

Patrick feels insulted, before he remembers he should feel relieved that he hasn’t blown the whole thing. 

Jonny asks what the solution to their disorganization is.

Guided meditation is the first thing Helena suggests, and to Patrick’s surprise, Jonny’s nodding along enthusiastically.

“My parents—” he says, and breaks off.

“Ah, yes, the intake form mentioned that,” says Helena. “And I know you might be thinking these are very different situations, a career bond versus a romantic bond, but people who can keep it working for that long have got a lot of things figured out. When they talk about bonds, you should listen.”

“Yeah,” says Jonny. As if Jonny needs that advice. As far as Patrick’s concerned, Jonny listens to his parents too much.

But Jonny’s parents actually make it easier, because Jonny leads Helena down a side track about them, and Patrick’s left to watch and feel kind of impressed. It turns out that bond specialists are fucking fascinated by people who grew up in a families with romantic bonds. Jonny doesn’t have to say much about himself—it’s all _my mother_ this, _my dad_ that. Patrick has met Jonny’s parents and they’re pretty cool and all, but he still doesn’t want to know about their epic love. It’s worth it when they run out of time without using the unnerving tennis ball.

There’ll be more appointments to navigate, but luckily they have a bunch of road games coming up. There’s time to figure out a strategy.

Patrick flings open the door to the hallway, feeling pretty good about everything.

“Well—” he starts, and almost runs into a man trying to get into the office.

It’s Pat Brisson.

“Oh,” says Patrick. “Uh, hi.” 

It’s probably his imagination that Brisson narrows his eyes at little when he looks at Jonny. It’s just because of the last conversation they had.

“Bond going well?” asks Brisson.

“Yeah, fine,” says Jonny. “What brings you here?”

“Bonds.” Brisson sighs. “What else? I’m about to find out whether this place will schedule appointments for guys with a cap hit under 5 million.”

Jonny sort of fake-laughs, but Patrick doesn’t see how that’s a joke. It’s probably a legitimate concern.

Brisson doesn’t accuse Jonny of anything this time, and they head to the car. Jonny doesn’t talk much on the drive back, except to say he’s okay when Patrick asks. Fucking bonds, Patrick thinks. 

 

*

They play the Flyers next and they don’t win. Fuck it, moving along, nothing to see _there_.

 

*

They’re on the road, and Patrick’s missing having Jonny next door. It’d be weird to ask for it right now, with new bonds needing to be broken in like new skates. Maybe in a month or so. 

It’s fucked, Patrick thinks. He should be asleep by now but instead he’s watching something about tornadoes on the Weather Channel. He kind of gets Jonny’s thing about hockey bonds, because—bonds should pull you closer. Jake and Kevin on the Knights avoided each other away from the rink. Patrick honestly doubts his and Sharpy’s friendship would’ve survived a bond, not because it’s weak or anything, but for all the reasons it’s not. 

There’s someone knocking on the door. Patrick tenses, it’s late and maybe something’s wrong, and—through the peephole, there’s Jonny in sweats with his hair sticking up on one end.

“Couldn’t get back to sleep,” he mutters. “Why are _you_ up?”

Patrick shrugs. “Couldn’t get to sleep in the first place.” Thinking about bonds, he doesn’t say. Now’s the last time to get Jonny started on that.

Jonny makes an unintelligible noise and flops down on the other side of Patrick’s bed.

“I think everything’s going alright,” he says after a moment. “We’re not, you know...making things harder for anyone else.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick, sitting down again and leaning back. “I’m not worrying, really, just thinking.”

“Yeah.”

Jonny reaches out and flips the switch on the bedside light.

Patrick has shared a lot of hotel rooms with Jonny. All those years. It shouldn’t, but this feels really strange.

Patrick can sense Jonny more than see him, stretched out on the other side of the bed, a dip in the mattress and body heat.

“It’s just stressful, I guess,” says Patrick.

“I know,” says Jonny.

They’ve started whispering, now that it’s dark.

“My parents do a thing where they lay down like this and touch,” says Jonny, “and then they try to clear their minds till there’s nothing else, it’s just turned off. It’s like—meditation, you know.”

The link is strongest when you’re touching. Patrick doesn’t think he _could_ turn it off, since on the rare occasions he tried meditating he usually thought about hockey. And it seems—counterintuitive. The bond specialist never said anything about turning it off completely.

“Like this.” Jonny reaches out and rests his hand over Patrick’s forearm. “And then they stay quiet until the bond is quiet too.”

“We’re not bonded, though,” whispers Patrick. Jonny shrugs against the bed, his hand shifting along Patrick’s skin. His fingers are warming up now. 

“It’s the same way to fall asleep, really,” says Jonny. “Only think something if it’s worth waking up for.” He goes quiet then, eyes closed and breathing steady.

Patrick doesn’t shut his eyes. There’s enough light from the street coming through the space between the drapes that he can make out the fuzzy bulk of the TV cabinet, the darker blur of the alcove by the door. 

He doesn’t know what Jonny wants. It’s the first time in awhile that he’s thought about that.

Patrick has wanted Jonny—in 2011, maybe, and definitely in 2008. Not in a steady way or in any part of his mind he checks regularly, because he isn’t a masochist. There’s no bigger turn-off than someone believing in soulmates and knowing you aren’t theirs.

Lights scatter across the ceiling and fade as a car passes by their window.

“I broke up with Anna,” says Jonny suddenly into the ensuing dark. “Not the other way around.”

“Oh,” says Patrick. He thinks back, tries to piece it all together differently.

“Go to sleep, Kaner,” Jonny whispers.

Jonny’s breathing evens out after that, maybe he’s asleep this time, maybe that’s all there is to be said and nothing more to it. Patrick closes his eyes and tries to quiet down.

There are too many thoughts worth waking up for.

 

*

It’s coming up on the end of October and nobody’s caught them yet. It’s Friday night and Patrick’s out for dinner with some of the guys—no Jonny yet, but he and Seabs are on the way. 

They’re in St Louis and Patrick probably shouldn’t be surprised when they come in with TJ Oshie trailing in their wake.

And it turns out that Jonny told TJ they were bonded. Of _course_ Jonny told TJ. Jonny has no fucking sense of self-preservation.

Jonny shoves past Seabs to plant himself next to Patrick. 

“The happy couple,” says Oshie, settling across from them. “Shit, Patrick, it’s weird to think you know all that stuff now.”

“Who’s to say I didn’t know it already?” Patrick asks. “He didn’t just blindside me with everything.”

Oshie looks meditative, then says, “Nah. There are some things Tazer would totally blindside you with.”

“Well, some,” says Patrick, because yeah. Tazer would.

Jonny’s fingers are circling his arm, just under the edge of the table. Maybe he has a little self-preservation instinct after all.

TJ starts telling a story. Patrick has been on the receiving end of some of those before, and maybe he’s reading too much into everything. But. 

“So there was this guy from the lacrosse team…” says TJ.

“Now TJ’s gonna demonstrate his super memory,” says Jonny, and _oh._ That’s a warning. Is TJ suspicious, testing them? Patrick doesn’t see how TJ would figure it out when no one else has, unless distance is providing clarity on this.

“Not sure if I remember his name…” TJ murmurs. “Kevin, was it, Patrick?”

Press, poke. Stop. That’s an N.

“Nope,” says Patrick. 

“Haha,” says TJ, saying it and not actually laughing. It’s weird.

Jonny’s got a death grip going on. Patrick twists his arm, trying to ease it.

“But we both know about Jonny and bonds, don’t we,” TJ continues.

“Shut up, TJ,” says Jonny tightly.

“No, no,” says TJ, with a very cheerful smile. “This is not about you, Jonny. This is about how Kaner is like, an extension of you now.”

“I am _not_ ,” says Patrick, appalled. And why should Patrick be an extension of Jonny, and not the other way around? Jonny’s fingers feel offended, though probably for different reasons.

TJ starts chattering about how this one time, they met this guy at this party, and he always wondered if Tazer… Patrick doesn’t think he’s noticed that Seabs is blatantly listening in.

_L-I-E-S,_ spells Jonny.

Patrick doesn’t even know what this story is about. TJ maybe wants Patrick to fill in the gaps for his benefit, or—some other reason. Jonny hopefully knows what the deal is here. His time would be better spent telling Patrick’s arm about that. Or just shutting TJ up somehow. Patrick suspects continually sipping on his glass of water isn’t doing a very good job of covering up how he’s not talking.

Patrick has no idea what any of those letters from Jonny mean. Turns out it’s fucking hard to keep track of two conversations at once, especially when both of them are leaving out half the necessary words.

Patrick doesn’t think either of them are telling the truth, anyway. So it hardly matters.

— _N-O-R-E-T-J._ Patrick can guess what that was. He pours himself another glass of water. 

“Can we not do this right now,” says Jonny. “All your lies are confusing Patrick and giving me a headache.”

Jonny probably has a headache for real. Patrick has little scrapes on his skin from Jonny’s fingernails. Jonny is a fucking idiot.

TJ settles down when the food gets there. They talk about hockey.

But Jonny’s hand stays, the pad of his thumb smoothing out the reddened skin on Patrick’s inner arm. 

 

Patrick follows Jonny back to his hotel room.

“It doesn’t work if you don’t tell the truth!” Patrick bursts out. “What’s the point of a code, then?”

Jonny glares at him. “I wasn’t lying.”

“You _were_ ,” says Patrick. “You can’t _lie_ to me, I’m your _bond partner_.”

“ _You’re not my motherfucking bond partner!_ ” Jonny yells.

They stare at each other for a second. Patrick wonders if whatever teammate’s next door has gotten back yet.

“Yeah, Jonny, I know,” says Patrick. He grabs Jonny’s duffel bag and drops it onto the bed. “We’re not bonded. We’re not even compatible. Thank fuck for that, right? Then I’d know the truth about whatever it was you two were talking about.”

“I don’t know,” says Jonny, sounding miserable. Patrick turns to look at him. He’s got his arms folded across his chest, gaze on the floor. 

“Did TJ suspect something?” Patrick asks. 

Jonny says, “No, not like that.”

“Not like what?”

“Just—not,” says Jonny. “He doesn’t think we’re not bonded, I mean.” 

“What _does_ he think?”

“What are you doing with my bag?” says Jonny. 

Patrick isn’t sure. He’s unzipped it. He has a vague idea of throwing every item in it at Jonny, one by one, starting with the light stuff and working up to the heavy. 

“Just answer the question,” he huffs.

“It’s TJ. You think I even know?”

“Probably,” Patrick mutters, but he zips the bag back up. “I don’t know about this, Jonny.”

“We can avoid going out places together with the team,” Jonny says. “That would be easier.”

And oh, hell—it would be, and when has Patrick ever gone the easy route with this. “No,” he says.

“They’d understand,” Jonny continues, like Patrick hadn’t said anything. “Especially this early. It’s _normal_.”

“I don’t know why you’re trying to convince me when you don’t even believe it yourself,” Patrick snaps. It’s almost November. They’re in too fucking deep, is what they are.

Jonny’s making one of his weird expressions. Maybe it _is_ because he’s thinking in French. Tabarnak and so on.

There’s a minute where nobody says anything, Patrick picking at the duffel bag’s zipper and Jonny watching the carpet.

“I’m not lying to you, okay?” Jonny says finally. “Not telling everything about everything isn’t the same as lying.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Patrick says, because there are _so many things_ Jonny hasn’t told, but it’s not like Patrick can’t guess the general idea anyway. It’s not like it didn’t hurt just because Jonny didn’t _tell_ Patrick his 2008 infatuation was worthless to him. It’s not like Jonny isn’t chasing after a soulmate, even though he’s never told Patrick in so many words. When Jonny doesn’t tell about something that usually just means it’s a big deal. And that, Patrick has always figured, is what Jonny wants a bond for. So he doesn’t have to tell.

Jonny says, “We should get to bed.”

That’s Jonny dismissing him, the same way he’s done a thousand times before. Patrick goes back to his room, lies there in the dark and wonders whether he’d really know if sometime Jonny meant it differently.

 

*

“See, this is the problem,” says Jonny at practice. “They think because it’s a fucking ‘hockey bond’ it’s something you practice on a hockey rink.”

“And how _do_ you practice it?” asks Seabs.

“Alone,” says Jonny. “You have to be still and quiet, not skating around, shouting stuff. This is stupid.”

“Everyone practices hockey bonds like this,” says Seabs.

“Everyone is _wrong_ ,” says Jonny mulishly.

Patrick doesn’t see why it matters that much. It doesn’t matter how they practice being bonded, because either way they still won’t be fucking bonded. Jonny was the one getting mad about that on Friday.

And, thing is, Patrick wonders if Q’s practice strategies aren’t actually helping somehow. He’s trying to be more in sync with Jonny, looking harder for certain cues, and—he’s finding them, sometimes.

Call it instinct, call it luck, call it 20 years and all your senses honed for it. Patrick steals the puck and thinks he might be getting something out of this. Patrick’s always figured he has pretty good ice sense, but you know, there’s forever going to be room for improvement. Jonny of all people should be on board with that.

Jonny’s a cranky fucker about it, but it’s not going that badly. Patrick feels more worn-out afterward than he’s used to, but maybe he can get accustomed to it. 

 

*

So—maybe he’s wrong, because the game against the Ducks doesn’t go too well. He catches himself on the bench in the 2nd period, wondering if bonding with Sharpy would’ve helped this any. Of all the useless things to be worrying about, but a two-goal deficit does that kind of thing to a man.

They don’t tie it up, Hoss goes down and the refs miss the penalty, it’s not a good night at the United Center. 

But at least it’s not the kind of night where Patrick can honestly blame himself. He spent most of the night on the first line with Tazer, it was way better than last game, and shit doesn’t go your way every time. The two of them were responsible for preventing the shutout.

So—could be worse. 

_Could be worse, could be worse,_ that’s the chant in his head for the duration of the grim procession down the tunnel.

 

*

People tend to conflate bond compatibility with other kinds of compatibility. This is because people are stupid and have trouble with complexity.

Sometimes it makes you an unlikely new friend, sure. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes you are 14 years old and you go see your favorite band play live. You watch the singer and feel convinced that this rush of adoration must be the sign of your compatibility. On the way home, drunk with euphoria, you trip over a paunchy 50-year-old man chewing on a sub with his mouth open. Your eyes meet. Then you vomit onto the tree lawn while he laughs at you. (Sometimes you are Erica, and it’s very unfortunate.)

Which is all to say that: a bonded partner could read Patrick’s mind and passively-aggressively think hockey at him anyway. When Patrick tells Jonny he just doesn’t want to talk about it tonight but there’s chicken marinating in the fridge, Jonny says “okay,” and preheats the oven.

It’s not like the season is going _badly_. They’re leading their division, Patrick and Jonny have both racked up decent numbers of points. Their teammates haven’t been fussing over the bond so much lately. (“You aren’t even that different,” Duncs said. “So?” said Patrick. “That’s just because we already knew each other really well. Remember that time when Laz refused to believe you and Seabs weren’t bonded?” And Duncs said, “Kaner, you know we don’t talk about that.”)

So Patrick has nothing to worry about, really. This is the safest he’s been since before management found out about him and Sharpy, and they don’t seem to have ruined anything with it. Hoss will be back next game.

Jonny comes over and stands by the couch. It’s facing the TV again. 

“I don’t know why you bought a condo with such a bad layout,” says Jonny, sitting down and stretching his legs out. “You got way ripped off for this.”

“It’s fine,” says Patrick. “I like it.”

“And then there’s all the closets,” Jonny continues. “Why do you need so many separate closets? Couldn’t you just have a couple bigger ones?”

“Uh, organization?” Patrick suggests. He doesn’t concern himself with his condo’s closet count. “I put all the hockey stuff in the one closest to the entrance.”

“What about the next one?”

“Linen closet,” says Patrick. “I never use that one.”

“Never?” asks Jonny. “What if you need linens?”

“Oh, I don’t keep them in there.”

“Then how the fuck is it a linen closet?” Jonny demands. “See, your closets don’t make sense.”

“They don’t need to make sense,” says Patrick. “They’re closets.” He should probably check what’s even in the linen closet one of these days, though. “What the fuck do you care about it, anyway?”

“Um,” says Jonny. Oh, right. He’s fucking stalling about something again.

Patrick angles toward him. Jonny’s not a super-relaxed person in the middle of the season, as a rule, but Patrick thinks it’s a specific thing he’s worried about. Patrick says, “Are you planning to tell me?”

Jonny blinks, then says, “You know the HBA?”

Yeah, Patrick hasn’t fucking forgotten the people who made this whole thing work in the first place. 

“They’ve been getting a bunch of requests for info about my involvement in it, recently,” says Jonny. “Phone calls and emails. Margaret from the main office called me, she said she thinks it’s all the same guy and thought I should know, since it was kinda weird.”

“You have a stalker,” Patrick suggests. 

“Mmm,” says Jonny. “I just thought—you know, bonds. Nobody really asked about it before.”

“Maybe it’s some journalist who thinks we’re bonded and is looking for proof.” Patrick grimaces. It’s gonna happen eventually, he’s pretty sure. Teammates can be surprisingly discreet about shit, but it rarely lasts forever. Last year everyone knew about Seguin and Benn by January, and they had a bigger incentive to keep it quiet.

“Hopefully it’s just that,” says Jonny, and Patrick jerks toward him, startled.

“You think it’s about the—certification or something?”

Jonny wrinkles his nose. “Well, maybe not.” But he still looks uneasy.

The oven beeps. Jonny gets up, waves Patrick off. Patrick watches him putter around. He knows where the pans are, or maybe he just guessed right. Jonny lines the pan with parchment paper Patrick didn’t know he had, bends over to put the chicken in the oven.

Jonny’s got a great ass, that’s speaking factually and has nothing to do with Patrick’s personal preferences. Jonny has—pretty good everything, except for his stupid face, maybe, and all of his thoughts, which are much stupider. 2014 Patrick thinks 2011 Patrick would totally hit that. On the countertop, and they wouldn’t talk about it, because 2011 Patrick was probably dumber than present-day Jonny. But then, Patrick tells himself, he never did any such thing in his kitchen in 2011 (or as yet in any other time and place). The thought is heartening.

Jonny glances up and catches Patrick’s gaze.

“What’re you looking at,” he mutters. 

And that’s—incredibly interesting, because there’s a blush creeping up over Jonny’s cheeks. Patrick wonders if he’s finally learned how to leer properly. 

“You,” says Patrick. “Duh.” That probably ruined the leer.

“Why,” says Jonny, shooting for dismissive and ending up too sharp.

“Oh, come on,” Patrick says. “Not gonna stroke your ego, nope.” And he wishes he hadn’t mentioned stroking anything.

Jonny says, “Should I make some rice to go with the chicken?”

That’s not what Jonny said in 2008. Patrick thinks perhaps this is progress of some kind, although the time for Jonny to get over himself passed them by awhile back. At least, the time for getting over himself and having no-strings sex with Patrick on the countertop, that time’s passed. Because, like, Patrick is fucking _mature_ these days, and mature people know better than to fuck their buddies on countertops. Especially when they’re sharing a secret that takes a certain amount of open communication to maintain.

So they eat chicken and rice, and Patrick asks Jonny what he actually does with the bond association, anyway.

“Not much,” Jonny says. “Just, you know, try to support the younger guys. Make sure they know their options.”

“But you’ve faked something before.”

“Eh.” Jonny shrugs. “It was just the documentation, they didn’t fake the bond. Only one of them was a hockey player.” He shrugs again. “They were together, you know. They thought it might be easier that way. He fucked up his knee and it was all a moot point, anyway.”

“Huh,” says Patrick. He swirls his fork around in his rice. He’s never followed this stuff, much. The people who worry about hockey bonds are the guys who don’t think they can make it to the show alone, or the guys who want that kind of narrative. Patrick’s neither. And Patrick thought he was _safe_. 

“You must know a lot more than most people about bonds in the league, then,” Patrick comments.

Jonny makes a face. “Not as much as you would think. Or as much as Pat Brisson thinks—man, he asks a lot of questions.”

“Really?” Patrick remembers Brisson warning him, the day he and Jonny signed off on the bond.

“Well, it makes sense that he’d want to know about guys’ bonds. And sometimes I think that he thinks being bond-compatible makes us buddies or whatever.”

“Wait. You and _Brisson_ are…?” Patrick gapes at him.

“Didn’t I ever tell you that?” asks Jonny. 

“Uh, _no,_ ” says Patrick. He’s almost a little offended that he didn’t know. Not that Jonny knew about Sharpy till last year, so that isn’t fair. “For real, I had no idea, that’s fucking weird.”

“No weirder than Shaw and Tianshu from Hong Kong Market.” Jonny shrugs. So he had heard about that. Patrick doesn’t agree, because Tianshu has nothing to do with hockey, and also—isn’t Pat Brisson. He thinks it makes it especially rude that Brisson thought Jonny would fuck Patrick over or something. Patrick’s potential bondmates have been quite nice, the four he ever actually talked to. Rowenna Hayes is 87 and still sends him birthday cards with checks for $15. Sharpy laughed and laughed when he found out. (Sharpy is the least nice of the four.)

Of all people in the world, Patrick never thought he’d be jealous of Pat Brisson. So Patrick concentrates on his chicken, which Jonny made for him, and not for Pat Brisson. Jonny has surely never cooked for Brisson at all. So there.

 

*

Erica calls when Patrick’s in his hotel room in Toronto.

“Check your email and get on Skype,” she says, and hangs up.

Patrick is so terrified that he mistypes his password twice.

The email’s just a link to an article on Puck Daddy. With great trepidation, Patrick clicks on it and reads: _Are Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane bonded?_

“Rumors are growing that the Blackhawks quietly bonded their two biggest stars over the summer,” writes the author. “But why now, after all these years? You’ll remember this was a hot topic back in 2008, but even if they are compatible, you’d think that ship has sailed. I’m skeptical.”

Patrick scrolls down to the comments, about half of which are accusing the writer of making up the rumor himself. It’s nothing close to concrete, but yeah, he gets why Erica called. He opens Skype.

“Are you and Jonathan Toews bonded?” Erica asks, not bothering with hello, how are you, various other things good sisters might say.

“No,” Patrick sighs. “We’re not even compatible, okay, you knew that.”

Erica sits there for a moment, squinting at her laptop screen.

“Huh,” she says. “You’re not lying.” So rude, that she’d sound that surprised by it. “If you’re not bonded to Toews, who are you bonded to?”

“No one,” says Patrick.

“But you said you were compatible with someone…”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t happen.”

Erica is squinting at the screen again. “There’s something going on, though,” she continues, “probably something dumb that’s your fault.” _So rude._

“There’s nothing,” says Patrick, trying to say it in the same voice as his previous denials. It doesn’t work; Erica just shakes her head.

“You’d better explain to me why the guy on Puck Daddy thinks you’re bonded—” And then she stops, her eyes going wide. “Oh, my god. You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what,” says Patrick uneasily. She can’t possibly have guessed the truth. Erica tends to be surprised by his bad ideas, as hard as she tries to keep up with them.

“You and Jonathan Toews,” she says. “You’re together, aren’t you. After _all that_.”

Patrick feels his jaw drop. “I— _what,_ ” he says. “I am _not_ dating Jonny. I am _never_ dating Jonny, because me and Jonny are _not bond compatible_ , which I told you in _2008_ but then you forgot, I guess, because now you’re accusing me of all this—”

“Pat, stop.” Erica holds up her hands. “I just wondered, okay? Like, you were never very clear about it, so I thought maybe I’d gotten it wrong.”

Patrick had been really, really drunk. He’d barely remembered the phone call to Erica, just woken up to a vague sense of impending doom and a much less vague sense of impending vomit.

“But,” says Erica, because there always is one, “that just means it’s something else.”

“I have to take a nap in 15 minutes. You don’t want to mess up my pre-game stuff and have us lose to the Leafs,” Patrick warns.  

Erica says, “You’ll sleep much better after you get this off your chest.”

Patrick isn’t sure 15 minutes is enough time to explain all this. He says as much to Erica, who looks suitably alarmed. Plus, Patrick wonders if he should talk to Jonny first—although _he_ told his mom without talking to Patrick, and moms are way worse than sisters.

“Can you let me off for a day?” Patrick asks.

“Don’t you have a game tomorrow too?” Erica asks suspiciously. “You’ll just do the same shit.”

Damn. “Okay, fine,” says Patrick, takes a breath, and, “me and Jonny are faking a bond.”

“What,” says Erica, then, “ _what_.”

Patrick gives a little shrug and turns his palms to face the ceiling. “You wanted to know.”

Erica’s shocked expression is giving way to horror. “I don’t think I did,” she says in a strangled voice. “You can’t do that. That’s not even possible.”

“Totally possible. We’re doing it—for god’s sake don’t tell anyone,” Patrick rushes to add.

“Patrick,” says Erica. “Patrick, just.” Words have failed her.

So Patrick tries to explain, which is harder than it should be for something that is _absolutely_ an understandable decision, thanks, if perhaps not the smartest career move of all time.

“I don’t see why you didn’t just bond with Sharp,” says Erica. “He’s in his thirties, right? So it wouldn’t be _that_ long.”

“I was gonna,” Patrick mutters. “I was gonna do it until Tazer came into the picture.”

Erica folds her arms and looks at Patrick for a bit. It’s very worrying. But she just says, “Well, don’t come crying to me when they kick you off the team for violating your contract.”

“I _said_ it wasn’t a hockey bond, keep up.”

“Okay, when they kick you off the team for being insane. Pat, I don’t get where you think this is gonna end up. I know he’s—whatever, you know what I mean, stop making that face. But it’s not a real bond.”

“It isn’t like that,” says Patrick.

“Okay,” says Erica.

They look at each other, or at each other’s videos on their screens. Patrick wishes she was in Buffalo this weekend.

“But seriously,” says Erica, “if you don’t tell mom and dad, and this gets out, don’t you fucking dare tell them I knew all along.”

Patrick will probably tell them about the bond. Eventually. Like, when he no longer has a choice.

“I have to take my nap,” says Patrick. “And I don’t feel better at all, by the way.”

 

*

Someone in the post-game press scrum around Jonny asks about the bond rumor. Patrick’s got his ears peeled for it and hears from across the room. He stumbles in the middle of his canned response about the Hawks’ defense (who even cares when the Leafs’ offense was so bad tonight, he doesn’t say).

Jonny’s saying, noncommittally—nah, there are still no hockey bonds on the Blackhawks. The guy right in front of Patrick is listening too, and asks pretty much the same question, as if he didn’t just hear Jonny’s answer.

“Didn’t we go over this like six years ago?” asks Patrick. “We’re not.” And it’s a testament to how confusing this has become that he feels like he’s lying.

 

The media elects not to make a fuss just now, probably because all their bond specialists are knee-deep in Benn/Seguin legal documents and don’t have time for mere rumors.

 

*

But Jonny on the plane home from Montreal is jittery as fuck for some reason. He makes Patrick sit next to him, then drums his fingers against the armrest and doesn’t say anything until twenty minutes after takeoff.

“I talked to Margaret again,” he says, when Patrick’s seriously considering beating him with his own magazine. “From the HBA. About that guy.”

“The stalker?” says Patrick.

“The _spy_ ,” says Jonny, entirely seriously. “That’s what he is. He’s trying to figure out if we’re bonded. Or, not bonded.”

“It has to be the first one,” says Patrick. “Unless—” Unless he’s someone on the Blackhawks, basically, or unless Jonny has told a lot more people than his parents and TJ. “Have you told a bunch of people?”

“No!” says Jonny. 

“You told TJ.”

“That’s one person, and I didn’t tell him the _truth_.” Jonny sounds so fucking self-righteous about his web of lies.

“Then it’s gotta be a journalist or something,” Patrick says. “How come they don’t know who he is?”

Jonny shrugs. “Nobody really noticed anything about it at first, until Margaret looked at everything. He calls from restricted numbers and he sounds Canadian, they said.”

“ _That_ narrows it down.”

“Look, I just—” Jonny shifts in his seat and taps on the armrest again. “It’s just weird,” he says finally.

Patrick will grant him that. But, “I don’t see what we can do about it.”

“Well, it is the HBA,” says Jonny, a little more cheerfully. “So whoever it is is looking in the wrong place. They don’t let anything slip. They must’ve had hundreds of people over the years trying to figure out who Crosby’s bonded to, and nobody’s worked that out.”

“I didn’t know Crosby _was_ bonded,” says Patrick.

“See? They know how to keep secrets.” No fucking wonder Tazer likes them so much. “Don’t go telling anyone about Crosby, though,” he adds, “and for god’s sake don’t ask me who he’s bonded to, because I seriously can’t tell you.” 

There’s a story there, Patrick thinks, but it’s late and all he does is murmur something reassuring and settle in for some rest, now that Jonny has stopped fidgeting so much.

 

*

Jonny continues to worry about it, but there are games to be played and just too much shit to do in general to get stuck on it for long. Hockey’s always gonna have to take precedence.

Down by themselves at one end of the rink, Jonny taps his stick, a little rhythm that Patrick belatedly realizes is supposed to mean something. _Tonight_ is the end of it, and Patrick turns to Jonny to ask: tonight what?

Jonny rolls his eyes, leans in closer to whisper, “Good luck tonight, play hockey better than you read codes.” He’s off down the ice, so Patrick doesn’t get to ask him why he said it in code in the first place. There was no one around to listen.

 

*

Tazer does things sometimes that make Patrick want to stop and stare in awe. But in some cases he can’t, because he has a goal to score, and score it he does. Holtby didn’t see that one coming, and no wonder.

It doesn’t really shut up the rumormongers, but—Patrick will take it.

 

*

One morning skate, he comes across Bowman and Jonny standing in the hallway, deep in a conversation. Patrick gets nervous whenever he sees certain front office guys, this season.

“Yeah, Patrick totally agrees,” Jonny’s saying. He turns and spots Patrick, and—let’s just say it’s a good thing he isn’t facing Bowman with that expression. The quality of Jonny’s poker face is really unreliable.

“Sure,” says Patrick, who’s gonna kick Tazer’s fucking ass if it’s something terrible. “Hi,” he says to Bowman.

Bowman looks between the two of them, nods to himself, and says, “Keep up the good work.”

“What was that?” asks Patrick once he’s gone.

“You know, just about how stuff is going.” Jonny’s poker face is great this time, but it spikes Patrick’s blood pressure just fine.

“One day,” says Patrick, “I’m going to find a truth serum and force-feed it to you.”

“You’d better fucking take it yourself too,” Jonny snaps.

And, fuck him, for real. Jonny has no call to be making false equivalencies here. No call to be looming over Patrick in the narrow confines of the hallway, his jaw clenched. And that flicker in his eyes—what has _he_ ever had to be afraid of?

“You know what?” says Patrick. “You don’t get to do this, you don’t get to act like it’s the same when you’re not telling about a million fucking things and I’m not telling about _one_. And you know how I’m gonna stop you? I’m gonna _tell you_.” His heart rate climbs with his voice. 

“What,” says Jonny, a sudden hitch in his breathing. “What aren’t you telling, Patrick?”

“That I still want to do _this_ ,” says Patrick, and slams Jonny up against the wall. He goes easily in the surprise of it, and Patrick digs his fingers hard into Jonny’s shoulders and meets his mouth so quick he almost misses. There’s one terrifying second where Jonny doesn’t kiss back, and then his mouth opens against Patrick’s. 

Jonny’s tongue is sliding against his, his hands fumbling at Patrick’s back for a moment and then grabbing, pulling closer. Patrick presses in and grinds up against Jonny, nowhere for him to go with his back to the wall of the—

United Center hallway.

Patrick jerks away, panting. Shit. Oh. Oh shit.

And there’s Jonny, pupils blown, hand only dropping from Patrick’s side when he gets too far away.

“I—not in the hallway.” Patrick barely recognizes his own voice. “Not—” The hallway isn’t the point, is the thing.

“Pat,” says Jonny, wide-eyed and quiet.

“Your turn,” Patrick says. He glances around him. “Not right now, my place tonight. I’ll—be fucking waiting.”

Jonny nods wordlessly.

Patrick gets himself around the corner of the hallway and leans against the wall until he feels like he can walk a straight line again.

 

*

Jonny actually does as Patrick tells him. Patrick doesn’t even wait that long, sprawled ever so casually on the couch, which he ever so casually turned to face the windows tonight. He’d tried to watch TV before but it was hopeless, both his concentration on the show and the direction of his couch. Fucking _Jonny_.

But here he is. Patrick should’ve figured out what he was going to do with him once he got him.

“I, uh,” says Jonny. “Earlier, you said—” He stops.

Patrick doesn’t recall saying a whole lot. Just about as much as he said last time. Six years ago, and Jonny had done the talking, and so that was as far as they got. 

Patrick says, “Do you need a recap?” 

Jonny shakes his head slowly.

And Patrick thinks: what does Jonny want? Because last time, well, last time Jonny balked at the idea of sleeping with someone who didn’t already know.

“I told you once about some of the things I wanted to do to you,” says Patrick, “and you said no. Are you gonna let me this time?”

Jonny shifts on his feet, his voice rougher when he says, “I don’t know, Kaner, am I?”

Patrick feels his response to that flare up, hot and uneasy under his skin. He takes a step forward.

Jonny takes a step back. “We should—I’m supposed to tell you something, too,” he says. “Let’s—” and he motions vaguely at the floor, the rug in front of the windows.

Patrick blinks at him while he flips the overhead light off, then sits down on the ground and pats the space beside him, a little impatiently.

He doesn’t know what the fuck Jonny thinks he’s doing. Turning it into some weird fake bond thing, probably—but Patrick can work with that. The main truth that Patrick cares about tonight is the truth of him getting laid.

They stretch out on the rug. Patrick wishes it was a little softer. Or that Jonny found the couch acceptable, because he doesn’t see why it’s not. Jonny’s never had a problem with the couch itself.

But, well. Jonny.

So here they are, lying on the floor in front of the windows. Flurries outside, unseasonably early. Chicago probably won’t get real snow for weeks more. Patrick likes it. It’s icy and sticks to the glass before falling away into the wind.

It’s good for ambiance, this kind of thing is supposed to have ambiance. Maybe Patrick should’ve stolen one of those scented candles that are always burning in the lobby. They were chocolate today.

It’s almost comfortable, even with everything unsaid, and then there’s Jonny reaching out, back of his hand against the bare skin of Patrick’s upper arm. This is Jonny—mimicking something. Something they’ll never have for real. Patrick wonders if he did it with Anna too, considered it practice.

“Management thinks we’re together,” says Jonny suddenly. Conversationally.

Patrick sits bolt upright, arm jerked away from Jonny. “They what? _Why_?”

“Ah, well.” Pause. “Because I told them we were.” Jonny doesn’t sit up, just continues his perusal of Patrick’s ceiling.

But that’s broken the comfortable illusion well and good. Patrick draws his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them. He’s not sure why he wasn’t expecting that—that has to be the Bowman thing.

“Why,” says Patrick again.

“It just—it explained it better. Why we waited, you know? It made a lot more sense that way.” 

“And they _believed_ you?”

“People believe anything, Patrick,” says Jonny. “You should know that by now.”

Patrick doesn’t believe Jonny very much. Not this year.

It’s weird, because he hadn’t worried about that for awhile. They’d understood each other well enough for what they were, and they’d avoided the situations where it mattered whether they got it perfectly right. They’d kept it so easy. And Patrick—had loved it, he _had_. He’d been so tired of second-guessing.

And, well. Here he is again, he supposes. Back in the dark at the bottom of the deep end.

“I told them we wanted to keep it quiet,” Jonny’s saying. “You know, nothing with the team yet.”

“Yet?” says Patrick.

“Well, I figure we could put that off forever pretty easy. They don’t really _want_ us to tell. Even if there was something to tell.”

Patrick gives him a sidelong glance. Jonny feels it, maybe, turns his head to the side and looks up to meet Patrick’s eyes.

Oh, Jesus, Patrick thinks, he is so fucked. There’s no _reason_ he should be having another go at this. Jonny’s wrong on all the same grounds, and Patrick’s sitting propped on arms that don’t feel too steady, his mouth dry and eyes on Jonny’s throat moving when he swallows.

It feels so much like a test. Jonny’s waiting on him, not because Jonny likes it that way, but because it gives Patrick all the more room to get everything wrong. 

Maybe Jonny wants him to, so he has an excuse to back out again. Maybe Jonny wants Patrick to go back to when they were 13 and get a feeling this time. Maybe Jonny wants Patrick to make him forget all about that.

And Patrick—

Patrick wants to blow Jonny on the floor in front of the windows. It doesn’t have to be complicated. 

He turns over and plants both hands on either side of Jonny’s shoulders. Patrick’s pulse picks up with Jonny’s intake of breath.

Jonny’s hands go up to rest lightly on Patrick’s arms. And he waits there, on the edge of it, till Patrick clears the gap.

It’s not a pretty kiss, not a nice one. Teeth clashing at first, an awkward angle. It doesn't feel exactly right and it feels _so_ _good_. 

Jonny’s fumbling down Patrick’s body, tearing at his jeans. Patrick pulls back long enough to take care of it himself, not long enough to feel like a pause. There are a lot of things Patrick has wanted to try with Jonny. Tonight isn’t for most of them. Complicating this is the worst thing to do if he wants a repeat, and it’s complicated enough inside Jonny’s own damn head. 

Patrick gets his hands on Jonny’s shoulders and pushes him down.

“You’re letting me this time,” he says, and he’s sure of it now.

Jonny gasps, “Yeah.”

Jonny’s got his shirt off but not his jeans, idiot, Patrick fumbles with the buttons—why couldn’t he have worn jeans with a damn zipper—

Finally he gets them down, gets his hand around Jonny’s dick. He kisses Jonny and catches his breath a moment. Trying to slow Jonny down, trying to slow himself down. He’s made it this long. Then he pushes back and dips his head, slides his lips up Jonny’s dick to meet his hand. The sound Jonny makes is enough for—everything, Patrick thinks. 

And Jonny’s face is a fucking thing to see. His eyes are black in the play of light from the windows and Patrick can see every gasp coming up his throat. Jonny gets an elbow under him, grabs Patrick’s shoulder with his other hand.  Patrick leans in again, faster now, it’s so hard to go slow with Jonny’s fingers curling across the nape of his neck. 

_Kaner_ , Jonny’s saying. _Oh my god_ , and _please_ , and something in French. It’s nothing like the French face now, that look. Lips parted, eyes half-closed, he props his other arm behind him and pushes in deeper.

And Patrick takes it, Jonny’s dick to the back of his throat, uncomfortable in exactly the way he wants it. Patrick’s so fucking hard he doesn’t dare touch himself.

Jonny’s gasps are going sharper, turning to groans. He’s a little louder than Patrick expected. Loud enough. 

 He doesn’t warn Patrick when he comes. Patrick swallows.

“Fuck,” Jonny pants, slumped back, “sorry, didn't—”

Patrick leans forward, gets a hand over Jonny’s mouth. _Shh_.

Jonny blinks at him, eyes so dark, batting Patrick’s hand away. “Just. Pat.”

Patrick grins down at him. “C’mon, your turn to suck me off, you know you want to,” he says, not sounding at all like he planned, breathier and close on a whine. 

Jonny’s lips twitch, he says, “so dirty, Kaner,” because of _course_ Jonny would be sarcastic right now, but he then he pushes Patrick around so he’s on his back.

And— _oh_. It’s no fair that Jonny has a mouth like that when he’s such a terrible person.

Patrick rocks his hips involuntarily. Jonny’s got it just right, this is fucking wonderful. He loses track of the when and where, caught up in the back and forth that could take forever or just seconds. (It’d better not be seconds, but if it is, well, Jonny wasn’t too much longer.) Then he’s pulling away, coming in Jonny’s mouth would be—weird, as much as it would be kind of fair. Jonny slides his hand along Patrick’s dick and that does it.

Patrick doesn’t know if he can move. Jonny’s hovering over him, spit-wet lips, cheeks flushed. Patrick imagines he must not look much different. He gets an arm up around Jonny’s shoulders and pulls him down, tangles the two of them together, on the rug in front of the floor to ceiling windows. 

Jonny kisses him, slow and easy this time, and settles up against him. Past him, outside the windows, the snow’s turning to rain. An office building on Michigan Avenue turns its lights out. 

It’s so dark at the edge of the city. There’s something about when you can’t see the lake, sometimes Patrick wishes his condo faced the other way.

“Pat,” Jonny’s murmuring. “Kaner, I. Patrick.”

“Mmm,” says Patrick. He feels heavy, doesn’t want to move away yet. After good sex it’s like there’s a little gap in time, a buffer in front of the future that doesn’t end until you stop touching. It’s a nice place to catch your breath.

And that was good, Patrick thinks, and he’s glad they didn’t miss out on six more years of it. 

“Kaner,” says Jonny, louder. “Kaner, it’s fucking cold by these windows.”

Yeah, alright. Patrick’s sex fantasies have never worried about drafts, but maybe they should start. He pushes himself up and wipes ineffectively at his own come that he’s gotten on his chest. Should’ve done what Tazer did after all.

“Go clean yourself up,” says Jonny, making a face and reaching for his shirt. “I’ll just—”

“Stay over?” Patrick interrupts. “I mean, we can order some food, get an early night, and tomorrow morning…” He waggles his eyebrows.

“We have a game tomorrow,” says Jonny. Then he shrugs. “Alright.”

Score.

 

They have to turn the couch back the other way to watch TV while they eat. Jonny heads into the guest bedroom after that, and Patrick doesn’t stop him, because the night before a game seems like the wrong time to test sleeping in the same bed. What if he kicks and injures Patrick, or something? Then he’d behave all fucking martyred about it.

 

Jonny gets up super-early the next morning, and is ready to head out the door by the time Patrick wanders into the kitchen. So all Patrick gets is a quick, hard kiss, with the counter digging into his back. But it’s a promise that there’s gonna be a next time, that this is a thing they’re doing now.

 

*

Getting with Jonny—(finally, fucking _finally_ , Patrick does a little fist pump in the elevator down from his condo and hopes someone sees it on the security feed)—it turns out to be great for hockey. Okay, maybe that’s a coincidence, because Crow stands on his head all night and _he_ didn’t get any. But they light the place up that evening, maybe the best crowd of the year there to enjoy it, screaming and red all the way up to the rafters. Duncs to Tazer to Patrick is the first of the night and it sure as hell doesn’t stop there. Patrick grins at Jonny, all of them on the ice after, some kind of feeling in the bottom of his throat when Jonny smiles back. Some of this shit just makes everything worth it.

 

*

“We need a better code,” Jonny says, leaning against his stick during a lull in practice. 

Patrick darts a look around them for people within hearing range, even though he knows Jonny would’ve checked before he started talking. “Why? What’s wrong with what we have?”

“You’re fucking horrible at it,” says Jonny. “Even if you miss a letter you should be able to guess some.”

“Who names their dog Tony,” Patrick mutters. 

“It’s better than whatever the hell you thought it was!”

“I’m gonna get a dog,” says Patrick. “I’m gonna get a wiener dog and name it Tot Q.”

“It’s called a Dachshund,” says Jonny disgustedly. “You can’t just walk into a store and say ‘I’ll take one wiener dog,’ that sounds like you’re going to eat it.”

Patrick doesn’t know what kind of shit goes down in Canadian pet stores, or if you can even get wiener dogs at them. “I’d never eat him! I’d dress him up in hockey outfits and post the photos on twitter.”

“So Tot Q is a male name, is it?”

Patrick has never really considered that wiener dogs could be female before. He doesn’t mention that to Jonny.

 

They don’t do anything about the code, though. Patrick throws a glove at Jonny from behind after morning skate in Calgary, and he grabs it without turning and keeps walking. That was for Leddy and Smitty’s benefit, because they’re still able to be impressed. Duncs sees and just rolls his eyes.

 

*

Patrick and Sharpy walk into the locker room in Edmonton that weekend, and Tazer’s—Tazer’s telling the story of how he and Patrick met to a couple enthralled rookies. Patrick’s a little appalled but also amused. Jonny’s making shit up, obviously, since when they met for real—13 years old and both a little at sea in all the same ways—Patrick didn’t get any feelings, Jonny didn’t meet his eyes across the rink and know, then and there, that they were good for this. But the rookies are lapping up his lies all the same. 

Sharpy makes an odd noise, and Patrick thinks, shit. He’s told Sharpy the Mrs Hayes story, and he definitely mentioned he was 14 that first time. And Tazer’s just said 13.

Sharpy turns away and calls out, “Hey, kids, storytime’s over, let’s get out there!”

Jonny breaks off, meets Patrick’s gaze a little defiantly. He probably thinks Patrick looks like that because he’s annoyed with Jonny’s story. But no.

Sharpy corners Patrick, back at the hotel waiting for the elevator to their floor. Patrick should’ve taken the stairs.

“What?” says Patrick.

“Peeks,” says Sharpy, and that’s concerning in and of itself. Sharpy doesn’t call him Peeks during elevator-wait conversations, as a rule. “Peeks, I heard what Jonny was saying, when we walked in. About how you two met. When you were 13.”

“Uh,” says Patrick. “Yeah.”

“Look,” Sharpy says. He shifts from one foot to the other. “I’m sure they probably blindsided him with questions about it, but that shit’s not cool.”

“What isn’t?” asks Patrick, stalling. Shit, shit. He doesn’t know how to explain this.

“Mrs Hayes the cat-sitter was when you were _14!_ ” Sharpy bursts out. “It _can’t_ have happened with Jonny when you were 13. Doesn’t Jonny even remember how it was for real?”

“I, uh,” says Patrick. “Well.”

Sharpy looks—well, he looks more pissed off than suspicious. Sharpy, Patrick realizes, is offended on Patrick’s behalf for Tazer daring to forget the true story of how they found out they were compatible.

“It’s not—” Patrick starts. It’s hopeless to explain this. “You have to tell the rookies a good story.”

“That wasn’t even a good story!” Sharpy says. “The real story can’t have been any less interesting.” Patrick thinks that’s unfair, seeing as how it wasn’t a whole lot different from his and Sharpy’s. This was a nicer story, even, because it ended with a bond.

“But,” says Patrick, “it could’ve been, you know…not something you want to share with the rookies.”

Sharpy blinks at him, then starts to look meditative. Oh, no. Patrick has put him onto the topic now and will likely never get him off it. Patrick’s going to have to make up embarrassing lies about his own life, which is not something that anyone should ever have to do.

“Hmm,” says Sharpy. It’s alarming. “But—it’s working alright? I really am fucking sorry about the whole thing.”

Sharpy’s apologized enough times for that, and Patrick waves him off. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

The elevator arrives and they step inside. Sharpy keeps giving him sidelong looks. Fuck, Patrick is glad that he never gave Sharpy the ability to read his mind.

“You and Tazer—” says Sharpy, and stops. Then, “It really is a personal bond, isn’t it?”

“Uh. Yeah?” Now Patrick’s eyeing him back.

“Well. I just wondered—you kinda had your back to the wall, didn’t you? Me or him.”

“Shit, man,” says Patrick, “a lot of guys would kill for a choice like that.”

“You wouldn’t.”

The elevator doors open.

No, Patrick wouldn’t. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel kind of guilty about it. Sharpy wasn’t enthusiastic, but maybe—maybe Tazer’s all wrong about bonds, maybe Detroit would’ve been better if Q hadn’t stuck him on the top line all game, maybe _Sharpy_ would think it was worth it, even if Patrick didn’t.

“There are worse things,” says Patrick.

“Yeah, like being an Oilers fan tonight, eh?” 

“Or ever,” says Patrick.

 

*

Patrick overhears Bicks asking Jonny for a certain personal factoid on Patrick Kane, Switzerland edition, in the airport on the way to Vancouver.

“None of your business,” Jonny’s saying, laughing it off. Which is a reasonable response when Jonny doesn’t know something he should, but Patrick’s pretty sure he _does_ know about that. Unless he just forgot that time when Patrick got kind of drunk after that Sens game and told Jonny all sorts of embarrassing shit about Switzerland.

 

He brings it up in the hotel room later. It’s the first time they’ve gotten connecting ones since last season, far enough in that Jonny no longer deemed it suspicious or whatever.

“I know I told you that,” Patrick says.

“Uh, I remember.” Jonny looks a little disgusted at that memory. “Unfortunately.”

“But you said it was none of his business?”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

“You’re doing this like, the opposite of how someone would expect,” says Patrick. “You’d totally have told him about it before we bonded.”

And that—was the wrong thing to say, apparently, because Jonny was looking relaxed and amenable to Patrick’s ideas and now he’s frozen and glaring.

“ _We are not bonded_ ,” says Jonny.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Patrick thinks they’ve had this conversation before. He’s already bored of it, and he searches for a diversion.

“How about I suck your dick?” A masterful change of subject.

“Kaner.”

“How about I suck your dick while you yell at me about things I already know?”

“It’s just—” Jonny drops onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. Never mind.”

“It’s just that you’re weird,” says Patrick, and sits next to him. It’s just that Jonny will forever have a bunch of fucking ideas about bonds, and Patrick thinks that maybe people in romantic bonds should be banned from having children, or something.

Jonny lets out a frustrated huff. “My mom thinks I’m being stupid.”

Hmm, maybe not. Now that Patrick thinks about it, Jonny probably did it all to himself. “What were you being stupid about, though.”

“Nothing,” says Jonny. “I haven’t been stupid.” He turns his head toward Patrick, a slow look up to Patrick’s eyes. “Have I?”

Patrick kisses him. He smiles into it, because Jonny has been so stupid, Jonny’s built this thing and what has it gotten him?

“Oh, fine,” says Jonny, and pushes him back onto the bed. That’s what it’s gotten him, it’s gotten him Patrick, who can’t read his mind and is never going to. Patrick is stupid too, is the thing.

 

*

Patrick’s family is planning on coming to a home game in mid-December. It’ll be the first one this season with everyone there, schedules getting harder and harder to line up now that they’re all different. Patrick has had that date mentally circled for a few weeks now as the date by which he has to tell everyone other than Erica what’s going on.

He probably needs to tell Erica as well. There’ve been a few updates since Toronto.

But he doesn’t know how much information to give them, sincerely doubts that Jackie will take it the same way Erica did, and the last thing he wants is them all fighting about it among themselves.

Plus there’s…the updates. Patrick doesn’t know whether he ought to mention, all casually, that he and Jonny are—involved? He certainly isn’t going to say they’re in a relationship. His mom would be planning a fucking wedding and that would end up disappointing everyone. But sleeping with Jonny feels like a momentous enough change that it’d feel weird to ignore it entirely. 

It’s not a problem with a simple answer, and it seems like fair play to let Jonny have some input, so it blindsides Patrick a little when Jonny decides to have a fucking meltdown over the subject.

Okay, it’s also partly about what Jonny thought was a less-than-stellar effort in practice, more on his own end than Patrick’s, and Patrick _gets_ that, but it doesn’t help him at all with what he’s supposed to tell his parents.

“What the _fuck_ is your problem, Kaner,” Jonny’s saying. The only reason he isn’t shouting is because there are still people around to overhear. “How the–why do you have to be doing this now? You–” He breaks off and just glares at Patrick, fuming. 

“Wow, _okay_ ,” says Patrick. “I just thought you might be a good person to ask, since you were telling your family all about the bond thing like two days after we decided.”

“Yeah, Kaner, I _was_.” 

Patrick looks at him and starts moving away slowly. “Some other time, then.”

“Fuck off.” 

That’s clear enough, and Patrick heads to his car. Jonny will have cooled down by the time Patrick next sees him. They can discuss Patrick’s family then and forget this whole thing.

Patrick drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Jonny’s tearing across the parking lot in a high-speed angry march, which is always a sight to behold. 

Maybe they shouldn’t just forget the whole thing, Patrick thinks.

Patrick tails Jonny home. It’s like an action movie, only Patrick already knows where Jonny’s going and it wouldn’t look tense from inside anyone else’s head.

Jonny gave him the key for “emergencies,” but Patrick can decide what’s an emergency since he’s the one with the key. He heads right up, unlocks the door and flings it open.

“Hello, Jonny!” Patrick shouts. Jonny’s sitting on the couch next to his bag. He hasn’t taken his shoes off yet.

“What the fuck!” Jonny yells, jumping to his feet. “Get the fuck out. Out!”

Patrick secures the key in his pocket and leans against the wall next to the door. “Not until we settle this whole…whatever it is.”

Jonny stalks nearer and glares down at him. “This isn’t what I gave you the key for. I want it back.”

“C’mon, Jonny…”

“I don’t want to fucking talk,” says Jonny. “Go away.” 

Patrick looks up at him and narrows his eyes. He tries to imagine that he’s getting inside Jonny’s head, figuring out whether he means it or not. He _can’t_ mean it. Jonny likes everything to run smoothly, and it can’t do that if he doesn’t talk to Patrick about it.

 “Why are you making that face,” says Jonny.

Patrick scowls at him. Not everyone can look pretty when they’re reading minds.

“Kaner.” Jonny doesn’t look too pretty either. Maybe he’s going to have an aneurysm. Patrick doubts he can maintain all this rage for that long, either way.

Patrick strolls past and goes into the guest bedroom instead, leaving Jonny sputtering at him from the living room. Patrick sits on the floor just inside and leans against the door. 

Jonny’s stomping feet come into the hallway.

“Kaner!” he shouts. “Get out of there!”

Jonny bangs on the door, right behind Patrick’s back, and Patrick gives an involuntarily yelp. “Hey!”

“I didn’t think you were right there, you idiot,” Jonny snaps. 

Patrick stretches his legs out in front of him and surveys the room. He’s spent a few nights in here, but not enough for it to feel very familiar. It’s bigger and better decorated than his own guest bedroom.

“This is a good place to sit,” he says. It’s not, actually, hardwood floors not being very comfortable for your ass, but this way he can brace the door shut if Jonny tries to get in.

“Come out of there.”

Patrick reaches an arm back and wiggles his fingers under the door. 

“You’re such a fucking weirdo,” says Jonny. He sounds a lot calmer already. Patrick is fucking right about shit, is what he is.

“Open the door, Kaner.” 

“Nope.” Patrick doesn’t feel like it yet. He hears Jonny sit down on the other side, the door moving a tiny bit when he leans back. There’s a pause then, Jonny and Patrick on the floor with two inches of door in between. It doesn’t feel very well-adjusted but Patrick sort of likes it anyway.

On the other side of the door, Jonny sighs.

Patrick sticks his fingers back under the door and pokes him. Jonny makes a sound resembling a squeak that Patrick sadly deems it best to ignore in the current time and place.

“Hey,” says Patrick, and wiggles his fingers again. Jonny’s hand comes down on them and presses them flat to the floor. He doesn’t say anything.

“So,” continues Patrick, “what’s your problem, anyway?”

“I just—” Jonny huffs. “I assumed you told them like a month ago, okay? And it pissed me off that you didn’t. And then practice. You know.”

“Oh,” says Patrick. “Okay, I guess I get that.” They’ve been on different pages the whole time with who and what they were telling, and they probably should’ve discussed that by now.

“Thank you for your understanding, Kaner,” says Jonny in that aggressively-solemn voice he thinks is clever. Patrick rolls his eyes at the guestroom ceiling.

Jonny releases Patrick’s fingers and starts poking his index finger instead.

“Seriously?” says Patrick.

“Shh,” says Jonny. I-F-Y-O-U-C-O-M-E-O-U-T. Pause.

“Hmm,” Patrick says. Truth be told, he doesn’t need much convincing. His arm’s twisted behind him at a really awkward angle. “We should still talk about my parents eventually.”

“Yeah,” says Jonny. “We have a couple weeks.” He moves his hand, not saying anything, just the scrape of his fingernail down Patrick’s index finger. “Hey, Kaner.”

And Jonny doesn’t have to spell anything out. Patrick figures he’d better move before he loses feeling in his arm.

Patrick pulls the door open and lunges forward, knocking Jonny back into the other side of the hallway. Jonny leans back, looking up at Patrick kneeling over him. 

“We have a couple hours,” says Patrick. 

“Hours? You?”

And that’s a challenge Patrick is more than happy to take on.

 

He doesn’t quite succeed at the challenge, but you can’t call it a failure either.

 

*

Patrick’s curled up in one corner of the couch, feet tucked under him. 

Today it’s apparently Jonny’s turn to come barging in. Patrick commends himself for being much more polite about it. He smiles and says hello before he asks what Jonny’s doing here.

“It’s—it’s about that guy,” says Jonny.

Patrick looks at him blankly. “Huh?”

“The guy who kept calling HBA about me! He emailed me. At least—I think it’s him. Shit, it’d better not be another one.”

“Huh,” says Patrick again. “What about?”

“It was weird,” says Jonny. He comes up behind the couch, leaning over Patrick, his fingers digging into the cushions. “It didn’t say anything to me, it was just a forward of the conversation he had with someone there, about when I joined, what events I participated in, that kind of stuff.”

“Hmm,” says Patrick, to change it up from the huhs. “Sit down, stop looming.”

“I’m not,” says Jonny, and sits. He laces his fingers together, elbows on his knees. “I really think he knows something.”

Patrick shrugs. “Don’t see why. It’s probably some random crazy person.”

“Then how did he get that email?” Jonny demands. “Nobody at HBA gave it to him, that’s for sure!”

“I dunno, Jonny.” Patrick leans into him a little, he’s at a very nice angle for it. “Didn’t the people at HBA ever ask him who he was?”

“He just said he was ‘an interested party’.”

Who _says_ that, like, aloud? Do crazy stalkers call themselves interested parties?

“I don’t know why he would email me that,” says Jonny. “Or whether I should do anything about it.”

Is Jonny actually asking Patrick for advice about something? Jesus fucking christ, he really is rattled.

“Does Bowman or someone suspect something, you think?” Patrick asks.

“No…” says Jonny, “I don’t think it’s any of them.”

At least Jonny hasn’t fallen so far into this hole as to think Stan Bowman would be harassing secretaries at the bond association.

“Who else would suspect something?”

“A journalist,” says Jonny morosely. 

“Eh, you can’t let journalists get you down.”

Jonny makes an incredulous noise, which—Patrick understands, but still, he feels like Jonny is overreacting about this.

“Come on,” he says. “Sitting on my couch and worrying about it won’t do any good. Let’s go for a walk.”

“What?” says Jonny.

 

They go for a walk along the river. It’s pretty warm today, jacket weather instead of coat. It’s not as calming as Patrick had hoped, too many people around and they get accosted a couple times by fans. Patrick wouldn’t normally mind, but Jonny’s so wound up today and he’s not getting any better.

Patrick gets him by the hand and pulls him into a cafe around the corner. It’s dim inside and everyone in there is on a phone or a laptop, and pays them no attention at all. 

“Patrick…” says Jonny, like he wants to leave.

“Shh, don’t call me Patrick,” says Patrick. “We’re incognito.”

“You don’t go incognito by walking into a coffee shop.”

“ _Shh,_ ” says Patrick.

He buys them each a coffee. He leads Jonny over to a table in the darkest corner of the shop. The guy writing at the table next to them glances up briefly and uninterestedly.

Jonny looks down at his coffee like he’s not sure what to do with it.

“I didn’t want a coffee,” he says.

“Well, I bought it for you, so it would be rude not to drink it,” Patrick tells him.

Jonny rolls his eyes. And sips his coffee.

Patrick wonders whether this should count as a date. He’s pretty sure it shouldn’t, but hell, nobody’s opinion but his own really matters here. Jonny’s is irrelevant. Does that make it a first date, then?

“Have we ever dated?” Patrick asks Jonny.

Jonny splutters into his coffee. “What? No. Wouldn’t we have noticed if we had?”

Well, probably. Patrick isn’t always sure, see. Sometimes he thinks whatever he and Jonny have been doing has blurred the lines between all the different categories of relationships. 

“I’ve bought you drinks before,” says Patrick.

“Yeah, and you’ve bought a lot of girls drinks before, and you rarely had any luck with any of them,” says Jonny.

“Lots of luck with you, though,” says Patrick. “How does that make you feel?”

“Terrible,” says Jonny, but he looks like he might almost want to smile. Patrick kicks him lightly in the shin and Jonny does smile then, though it’s half or maybe three-quarters a disgusted grimace. Whatever, that totally counts when it’s Jonny.

Patrick’s hardly even surprised when Jonny gets hold of his wrist under the table, thinks he’s going to start saying something too rude to be uttered in such a polite and quiet coffee shop. But he doesn’t, just holds his fingers there. Patrick feels suddenly compelled to start drinking his coffee again.

“What if we get blackmailed?” says Jonny suddenly.

“What?” When did blackmail come into this? Patrick doesn’t think blackmail starts with mysterious email forwards and lots of phone calls to a nonprofit you’re peripherally involved with, but then, he’s lucky enough not to know for sure.

“It’s something we need to think about,” says Jonny.

“Um, no. It’s not.” Patrick’s pretty sure that anyone in a position to find out wouldn’t be the type of person who’d blackmail anybody. Hockey players, for instance. That’s probably too complicated for them. And reporters would be creaming themselves over the story. That leaves—what? Fans? Patrick isn’t too afraid of them.

“Well, not blackmail, maybe. But what we’ll do if this gets out.”

Patrick frowns at him. “Weren’t you the one in October who was assuring me that would never, ever happen?”

Jonny looks uncomfortable and doesn’t say anything reassuring this time. Considering Patrick was never convinced it would last, Jonny’s uncertainty is more unsettling than he expected. Patrick’s—gotten used to this, maybe, in a way. It’s hardly a comforting thought.

 

*

Patrick’s dinner is interrupted by his phone ringing.

_Andrée Toews_ , says the screen. Patrick put her name in there, way back in the days when it made their parents feel better to know they had extra emergency contacts. He can’t remember if she’s ever called him directly before.

“Hi,” he says, light and hopefully not as uneasy as he feels.

She asks him how he’s been. She sounds friendly so far, but that doesn’t make Patrick feel any more comfortable.

“Everything’s alright…” Patrick mumbles. She knows a lot but he’s not sure how much.

“With this bond that you have?” she says. “You know, Bryan and I have always thought mind-reading is overrated. The best thing that ever happened to our relationship was when we learned how to lie to each other again.”

Patrick has no idea what to do with that information.

“It’s not that you should lie,” she continues, “but telling the truth means more when you have the option not to.”

“Um,” says Patrick. “Okay.” He and Jonny sure can lie, though lately it’s been more to other people than to each other. To each other, it’s mostly avoiding topics.

“It isn’t always easy, but some things help. Like meditation,” she says. “We lie down next to each other…”

Patrick has heard this before. Jonny might’ve been following his mom’s advice. And what did Jonny tell her, to get it?

“We’re not bonded,” says Patrick numbly.

“I know.” She has such a soothing voice. For a second it all feels quite reasonable. 

“Jonny’s—” says Patrick. “Jonny can be kind of weird about this bond stuff.”

“He can be, can’t he?” she says.

“He said you thought he was being an idiot,” Patrick blurts.

Andrée laughs. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Patrick isn’t really comfortable telling a mother he thinks her son’s an idiot, regardless of how true it would be. So he says, “I dunno,” which probably isn’t any better.

Andrée chuckles again, easy, like it’s all understandable and soon resolved.

“You keep an eye on him,” she says. “Sometimes he gets ideas.”

Patrick’s not sure, when he hangs up, whether he feels better or worse.

 

*

Patrick is enjoying this road trip. Hotels make everything easier, no need to plan shit, you can just wander over all casually and no big deal if he’s busy or asleep. He thinks whatever they’re doing is not what Andrée Toews would’ve wanted, but Patrick’s got his own ideas about this now.

“You’re fucking awesome at hockey, you know,” Patrick says. He’s got his arms looped around Jonny’s waist, head tipped back to look at him. Jonny looks sleepy and fond. Nothing he hasn’t looked a thousand times before, and Patrick has wanted him each time, secretly at one point and now less so.

“Hmph,” says Jonny, a little laugh, and, “How’re you gonna say thanks for that?”

It’s so much easier this way, even with all the reasons it ought to be a lot more complicated.

 

*

Patrick never needs to invite himself over to Jonny’s place. Jonny presses the letters into his inner arm, happily smug, in the locker room or the elevator or wherever Jonny gets him in front of a bunch of people who have no idea. It’s basically a standing invitation. Jonny could’ve always told him when they were alone, but he doesn’t do it that way. Jonny likes what he likes. Whatever.

They’re moving in better time with one another. There was another article on Puck Daddy speculating about it. Patrick still hasn’t told his parents, and sometimes in the middle of taping a stick or doing squats he thinks of this and feels slightly uneasy.

 

It’s Brandon Prust who brings it up, a nudge to Patrick’s shoulder during a stoppage of play and a brief comment to the effect that Patrick and Jonny are in each other’s heads now.

Patrick gives him a blank look back, easy to do when it’s the middle of the game and all that is the last thing he’s worrying about. 

He does worry about it later, on the plane to Nashville. Prust isn’t gonna be the last. Well, maybe it’ll die away again, same as it did back in 2008. Patrick’s pretty sure he provides guys with better things to chirp him about, anyway. He doesn’t mention it to Jonny. Jonny’s worrying enough about other things, this spy or whatever he thinks the guy calling the HBA is. Patrick’s more worried about the bond getting out than the _fake_ bond getting out, really. Patrick doesn’t know what he did to deserve a life with these types of problems.

 

*

“So,” says Q after a hard practice. “You two seem to be figuring something out.”

Patrick wipes the sweat from his forehead. “Sure?” he ventures. There’s something in the way Q’s standing, the expression on his face—it makes Patrick nervous.

“I wondered,” says Q. “This stage in your careers, seemed like it could be a lot to get used to. But now, I think I can understand why you did it.”

“Yeah?” Patrick says.

“You keep doing what you’re doing, is all I’m saying,” says Q. “It’s working pretty well so far.” He smiles, and then he—winks? Why the hell did he wink? He’s off through the doorway before Patrick can react.

Patrick worries about it all the way through until the game. 

 

*

They’re not really _together_ , whatever Jonny has told certain people. If they were together, Patrick would know, and Jonny would know, and nobody would spend time agonizing over stupid fish recipes and nearly ending up with third-degree burns. 

Patrick’s started thinking, more and more, that this might—this might continue to be a thing. A real thing, not just a casually fucking Jonny when he has nothing better to do thing. Not that it was ever going to be that, as much as Patrick would like to tell himself otherwise. It freaks him out a little.

The way he sees it, Jonny’s testing the waters. Jonny’s long had some vague fantasy of bond romance that he’s never wanted to replace with just Patrick. _Just Patrick_ was too fucking far off, and Patrick has never really wanted him to try. Just Patrick is so disappointing by comparison. But this thing they’ve settled on, for all it’s based on a pile of lies and Patrick wonders if there’s more Jonny still hasn’t told, Patrick wonders if maybe he can pass Jonny’s test. Read Jonny’s mind. Make it so that Jonny doesn’t ever have to tell, not really. And that freaks Patrick out even more.

If that happens, it’ll be Patrick saying yes to something Jonny hasn’t asked. (God, why does it always have to be yes with Jonny?)

If that happens, they’ll be completely in accord, exactly on the same page. If that happens, Patrick will know.

Patrick—Patrick doesn’t _know_. 

 

*

Patrick’s showing Leddy something he found online when he was googling wiener dogs last night (such are the depths Patrick is reduced to when he doesn't have Jonny in an evening, it’s maybe becoming a problem). He found some little dog outfits, they have Blackhawks 88 jerseys in Dachshund size and that is a fucking wonderful thing.

“What’s that for?” asks Shawzy, leaning in and seeing the photos on NHL.com’s pet section.

“It’s for my dog,” says Patrick.

“You don’t have a dog.”

“It’s for my imaginary dog,” says Patrick.

This enlightens neither Shawzy nor Leddy, but they have to head out on the ice before they can ask for explanations. Later, Patrick hears Shawzy asking Jonny if Patrick’s getting a dog, or something. 

“ _No_ , for fuck’s sake,” says Jonny. Patrick does not know what he has against wiener dogs in hockey sweaters, honestly.

 

*

Patrick gets home from the road trip and gets accosted by Pat Brisson before he makes it to the elevator. 

There’s a big tour group milling about in the lobby, so Patrick doesn’t see him till the moment he pounces. Brisson’s got the same busy, self-important air as always, and he doesn’t _act_ like he was lurking here waiting for Patrick, just happened to run into him, but Patrick is doubtful. Brisson says they should talk.

Patrick tells him he doesn’t have time (and he doesn’t, because Jonny is coming over this afternoon to “play Mario Kart,” quotes entirely necessary). But Brisson is so insistent that Patrick doesn’t know how to keep him out of the elevator without doing something really dramatic in front of all the tourists.

Brisson hems and haws a bit before getting to the point. Patrick has never had Brisson in his kitchen before and he doesn’t like the way he looks in it.

“How are things going?” is Brisson’s first direct question.

“Fine,” says Patrick. Is Brisson still on that? Does he think that…well, Patrick can’t begin to guess, actually. He doesn’t think he could read Brisson’s mind even with all the time and proximity in the world. Agents are no good if they aren’t enigmas sometimes.

Brisson nods. “On and off the ice?” 

“What do you mean?” asks Patrick.

Brisson purses his lips and waits a moment before answering. “Jonny can be very…persuasive when he wants to be. A bond can be a pretty good way to exert pressure on someone, can’t it?”

“Not for Jonny,” says Patrick. “He’s really serious about bonds.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time he was hypocritical about them,” says Brisson obscurely. “You’ll know all about that, eh?”

Patrick just shrugs.

Brisson takes a couple steps closer. “Patrick, if there’s anything…well, you don’t have to tell me any details, okay? But legally speaking, you have no obligations to the Blackhawks when it comes to this bond. It’s purely between you and Jonny.”

“Yeah…” says Patrick, because he knows, he’d _never_ have faked a bond that was written into contracts. Even Patrick isn’t that stupid.

“Just making sure,” says Brisson. “Don’t take it the wrong way if I want to check up on this periodically. It’s a touchy situation.”

Patrick is a way better bondmate for Jonny than Brisson would ever be. God, he wishes he didn’t know Jonny and Brisson were compatible. That’s gross.

“Don’t you trust Jonny?” he asks.

“With a lot of things, yes,” says Brisson, “but not with bonds.”

“You’re just pissed he wouldn’t snitch on Crosby,” Patrick snaps.

Brisson’s eyes widen; he looks more startled at that than he has any reason to be. Of _course_ Patrick would know about it by now.

“Does that mean you…” Brisson trails off.

“No. Jonny doesn’t know.”

Brisson’s surprise is immediately replaced by a sardonic expression. “Ah. Right. And neither does the HBA, isn’t that funny?”

Patrick doesn’t give a shit about Sidney Crosby and his mysterious bond. He has much more important problems, like how to kick Brisson out before Jonny gets here. 

“Look, it’s none of your business anyway,” says Patrick. “I only let you in here because I thought there might be something wrong.” Which there is, Brisson being the something that’s wrong.

Brisson sighs. “I’m only looking out for your interests, Patrick. You have to understand that.”

“Whatever.” Patrick doesn’t really care if that’s rude. He’s sure it all makes plenty of sense in Brisson’s mind, but it’s almost 3:30.

“…I’ll be in touch,” says Brisson after a pause. Patrick waves him off—shoos him, more accurately—and Patrick stomps back to look out the window while Brisson shuts the door a little harder than people normally do.

It’s not too much longer before Jonny shows up. He immediately stretches out on the couch, rubbing his neck and twisting his head from side to side.

“Okay?” says Patrick. Jonny fell asleep in a weird position on the plane. 

Jonny nods and reaches for the remote.

“So, Pat Brisson was just here,” says Patrick, still standing. “It was—kinda weird?”

Jonny listens, while Patrick leans against the back of the couch and doesn’t really mention how it sort of pisses him off every time he thinks about Brisson and Jonny being compatible.

“Huh,” says Jonny.

“Do you think he suspects something?” Patrick asks. “Or that, like, he’ll keep nosing around and find something out?”

“I dunno,” says Jonny.

Patrick wishes he was being more helpful, or—reassuring. Brisson’s been weird about this whole thing. A number of people have been fucking weird about it. But Jonny looks kind of tired, that probably wasn’t a good sleep on the plane, so Patrick sits down and says, “Ready for me to destroy you?”

“Hah,” says Jonny.

And it is just Mario Kart for awhile, until it isn’t anymore, and Jonny’s got his hand down Patrick’s jeans and the controllers are lying forgotten on the floor. Patrick is going to get off to the title screen music and that’s probably what he should’ve expected when he concocted this plan.

“You’re the best fake bondmate ever,” he pants. Jonny laughs.

“You wanna fuck me?” says Patrick suddenly. They haven’t made it that far, yet. Patrick wasn’t sure he wanted to and wasn’t sure about Jonny either, but now—yeah, he’s very fucking sure about Jonny.

“Now?” Jonny wets his lips.

Patrick shrugs, not something that really covers the tension but he tried. “I’ve got stuff in the bedroom?”

Jonny’s very amenable, or at any rate, it’s not long before they’re sprawled across Patrick’s bed, Patrick on his side and letting Jonny ease him open.

And maybe it’s a little surprising that Jonny gets that far, a finger in Patrick’s ass when he asks, “Have you done this before?”

“Yes,” says Patrick. 

Jonny stops moving.

Patrick rocks against him. “Jesus, that should make you go harder, c’mon.”

Jonny doesn’t move. “I haven’t,” he says.

That’s a little unexpected, Patrick knows Jonny’s hooked up with guys before, but maybe they never made it this far—or it was the other way around? That’s an intriguing thought to file away for later.

“Whatever, I’ll tell you what I want,” says Patrick. “Which, like, is to move your fingers instead of talking.” 

“But,” says Jonny, “I’m—I don’t—”

Patrick wants to crack up, it’s funny as hell that they’re having this conversation in this particular position, but Jonny might think Patrick was laughing at him. So he just says, “Believe me, I’ll tell you if you’re doing it wrong.”

And so Jonny starts back up, and it isn’t wrong at all. Patrick prompts him along, yes, more lube, and _yes please now_.

“You sure?” says Jonny.

“ _Yes_ ,” says Patrick. His first time trying this, he came all over the duvet before the guy ever got his dick inside of him. It was a total letdown.

Jonny props himself up over Patrick and takes a deep breath. He gets this look of intense concentration, easing in ever so carefully, far more carefully than Patrick needs. He wants to say something like _aw, you care_ , but the words don’t make it out when he meets Jonny’s eyes.

“Okay?” whispers Jonny.

“Yeah,” says Patrick, and pushes in closer. That gets Jonny going, finally.

Patrick tends not to be that vocal during sex. It’s just how he is, and sometimes that’s disappointed people who seemed to think he would, like, scream or something. But this time Patrick’s thinking he’d better make damn sure Tazer knows he likes it.

So he’s saying everything he’s thinking— _oh god_ and _Jonny_ and holy _fuck_ , when a fractional shift gets the angle just right. “ _Yes_ , keep doing that,” he says, before Jonny can get alarmed. Jonny’s red-faced and he never breaks from Patrick’s gaze, like he’s looking for the slightest sign that Patrick doesn’t like it.

He doesn’t get any signs. Patrick isn’t really talking toward the end of it but he gets in a good moan or two.

And would you look at that. It’s not just their on-ice timing that’s fucking awesome.

Jonny pulls out and collapses forward on top of Patrick. 

Patrick breathes deeply against the weight of him, feels the slickness of the condom against his leg. They should clean up and get on with their day, before Jonny starts snoring or something. 

“Jonny…” Patrick murmurs. This just feels too damn good. “Jonny, don’t you have that interview today?”

Jonny bolts upright and jumps off the bed. “Shit! What time is it?”

“Uh…” says Patrick, because he never reset his bedside clock after the last time he accidentally unplugged it, and it’s currently reading 6:13am.

Jonny charges off down the hallway. Patrick hopes he can find wherever the hell his underwear went.

Patrick wanders off to shower, but sticks his head back out the bathroom door when Jonny comes running back. 

“Have you seen my key to this place?” he snaps.

Patrick has not, and decides to just take his shower instead of watching Jonny flail around the condo in search of his lost belongings. He hears Jonny leave shortly after, then evidently return for a forgotten item shortly after, shouting something Patrick can’t hear and isn’t going to bother with because it’s nice and steamy in the bathroom now. He thinks it takes Tazer three tries, all told, to clear out.

At long last, Patrick is able to sing a celebratory round of Chelsea Dagger in the shower.

 

*

They end up out in Chicago on Saturday night. It’s been awhile, with road trips and all the extra commitment to the straight and narrow that the early season gives a guy. December, you’re the division leaders, all the nasty rumors are about other people, you can let loose once in awhile.

They start with dinner, Patrick squashed up against Jonny in a booth, and Jonny’s talking and talking. He starts pressing something totally different onto Patrick’s arm, Patrick doesn’t know how he’s keeping both straight, I-W-A-N-T-Y and a story about canoeing that would never happen in America. Jonny’s got that manic glint in his eyes, he’s having a great fucking time and Patrick loves watching him like this, Jonny when he gets loud.

— _you to fuck me_ , is the message Jonny sends. O-N-T-H-E-D-E-C-K. Patrick chokes into his water glass. There’re people who might see them up there. Everyone else is laughing at the canoeing story, but Patrick has no idea what it was even about.

L-A-T-E-R, is what he tells Jonny.

But Jonny doesn’t stop. Jonny—maybe gets off on this, or something, because he keeps shooting Patrick sidelong glances and the color’s up in his cheeks. Patrick thinks it’s sort of hilarious, but, shit, he has no idea how everyone else hasn’t noticed. They weren’t like this before— _were_ they? 

_I want your mouth around my cock, I want to fuck you, I want you to fuck me_ , Jonny’s hand wanders, and, _I can feel you, you’re ready for it right now_.

They’re off to the bar before Jonny does anything overtly obscene in the middle of a restaurant. Patrick’s not sure he isn’t disappointed. They lose track of each other for awhile after that. Shawzy has bad ideas about jagerbombs that are very distracting. Patrick’s not getting _drunk_ , exactly, just…not-sober. There’s a crowd in here tonight, it’s loud and warm and the lights are weird and make Patrick think of pregame shows. Saader’s shouting something in his ear that Patrick can’t make out, then disappearing into the mob. Leddy’s looking lost a little to Patrick’s left and Patrick waves to catch his attention. He hopes nobody asks him to find Jonny in this mess, but whatever, he can blame any failures on the drinking.

It’s funny how much better he feels than at the beginning of October. And it’s not just because he’s had more to drink tonight, no, there’s apparently some part of Patrick that feels suited down to the bone by the whole thing. Patrick’s smile at Leddy’s wavering approach is fucking _benevolent_. 

Jonny reappears then, big and close along Patrick’s side. He has a beer in one hand, but the drinks he’s had haven’t erased any of his memory.

“You said later…” Jonny’s getting all grabby. Patrick’s not quite ready to leave, and Bicks is shouting for him from the other side of the room.

“Everybody wants a piece of this,” says Patrick, and tries to climb on top of the bar. He can signal Bicks better from up there.

Jonny decides they’ve had enough and gets Patrick outside, but somehow they pick up Saader along the way, like one of those—shrimps, or whatever, that hitch rides on other animals but totally aren’t parasites, they’re just doing their shrimp thing. Saader’s thing is to talk really loudly about nothing in particular. They gotta shake him before they go back to Patrick’s place.

They’re heading along the river, the skyscrapers and their lights looming overhead. They’ve got enough company downtown that there’s a low-level buzz of conversation all around, peaks when someone laughs or shouts, everybody enjoying the relative warmth. The frosty air is raising goosebumps on Patrick’s forearms, but it’s balmy for December and no coat.

Jonny jostles Patrick’s shoulder, no reason, Jonny just likes to get up in your space and maybe be a bit painful about it. Patrick jabs him in the side with one elbow.

And Patrick’s a little bit in love, but not so’s you’d notice. Not if you’re a Blackhawk, anyway. Saader’s right there, chatting away about Leddy’s jagermeister-fuelled attempt to flirt with a tiny blonde girl with a Cubs tattoo on her shoulder, and for all that Patrick kinda respects a Cubs tattoo he’s not sure he’d go for that. 

They get rid of Saader before he sees them both heading back to the same place. Not that it even matters, Patrick thinks, because currently he feels like explaining the situation wouldn’t be impossible or even that inconvenient.

Up they go, alone in the elevator, and Jonny’s fingers lace with his like he wants to be led. Patrick pulls him down the hallway and remembers how to work a key.

Jonny’s panting, ready for anything, which brings to mind certain ideas Patrick may or may not have entertained in the past. He shoves Jonny against the counter, but Jonny just says “hey, my back” in a distressed voice, like a decrepit old man.

Although, maybe it’s a poor time for the kitchen thing. The countertops are pretty high, and it would hurt if you fell. 

So Patrick drops to his knees. Jonny likes that better. He doesn’t care at all about the edge of the counter once Patrick tugs at his pants.

Patrick gets distracted by the curve of Jonny’s left hip, following it slowly down. Jonny gives a breathy whine at that, hands tangled in the hair that Patrick never cut too short over the summer. 

“Im- _pa_ -tient, huh,” says Patrick, edging lower. “Say please.”

“ _Please_ ,” says Jonny, breathless and immediate, and there’s nothing more satisfying than that, except for maybe when he’s groaning and saying _Patrick_ over and over because Jonny is not creative at times like these, and when he’s coming in Patrick’s mouth. 

And it’s fair to say that Patrick always swallows, by now.

 

They have _time_ , Patrick thinks, lying in bed with Jonny asleep next to him. It’s been two months since they started the whole thing, less since—since whatever this is. They’re 26 years old.

Clouds are inching across the moon, narrowing the stripe of light on the duvet. There’s a front coming in. Snow by Tuesday.

Patrick doesn’t know quite what they’ve got here and tonight he hardly minds.

 

*

It’s 7:30pm, and this is Jonny. Jonny always minds about a lot of things.

Jonny sent a brief text to say he was heading over, Patrick got all excited, and then Jonny burst in with a crazy glare in his eyes, white-faced with red high on his cheekbones. Patrick has no fucking idea what it’s about. 

“Okay,” Jonny’s muttering to himself, “okay, okay.” All that’s telling Patrick is that something seriously isn’t okay. 

“Is, uh,” he says, “uh. What happened?” This kind of thing has occurred a couple times before. Patrick’s got this—probably.

Jonny takes a sudden step forward, then checks himself. “You just…you have no fucking clue.”

Which is true, as much as Patrick wishes it wasn’t. “You could tell me about it?” Jonny stops, right up against the countertop where Patrick had him last night.

Jonny looks at him for a moment. He takes a breath. “It’s—no. No, I’ll do this.”

“Do _what_ ,” says Patrick. He’s starting to get seriously nervous. 

“Nothing,” Jonny mutters. “It’s just, I’ll take care of it.” His face is already going back towards normal, and that just pisses Patrick off. How fucking dare Jonny barge in here and have some sort of meltdown, and then get over it before Patrick even finds out what it’s about?

“You’d better tell me,” he says. “There’s someone else who would expect me to know, right?”

Jonny tries to move back, but the kitchen counter is in the way. “No. Just. Be careful.”

“Don’t fucking _lie_ to me,” Patrick snaps. He’s half-wondering if he should get Jonny down on the carpet in front of the windows and see if that does any good. “I can _tell._ I might not be able to read everything, but I can read that stupid thing you’re doing with your face. What the fuck is going on.”

Which, great, Jonny is getting mad again. That’s even easier than the failed poker face. He’s got one hand on the counter behind him and his fingers clenched around the lip. White knuckles. Jonny will have, like, hand arthritis when he gets old.

“I’m not fucking telling lies,” spits Jonny. “I shouldn’t have to tell you anything!”

And, that’s. That’s the thing, right there. Patrick’s been waiting for it.

“Oh, shouldn’t you?” Patrick takes a step forward. “Why would you think that? Whose idea was this, might I ask? Why would you assume that I—why are you assuming anything? What do you think this is?” Patrick had waited for it but he hadn’t _prepared_.

“How did you not fucking figure it out?!” Jonny shouts. “You didn’t even _notice_.”

“Didn’t notice _what_ ,” says Patrick.

Whatever it is, it’s probably not about Jonny. Patrick would’ve noticed that, for sure. He’s got an idea, and it goes like this: Jonny got a nasty surprise earlier, and he’s blaming Patrick for it. Whether Patrick is actually to blame is…deeply questionable. 

“ _What,”_ says Patrick again, when Jonny doesn’t respond, just breathes hard in that really crazy way. “Why would I know?”

“Maybe if you put your linens in your FUCKING linen closet like a _normal person_!” Jonny shouts, and slams one fist down on the countertop. The sound of it would make Patrick wince, except he kinda wants to make that sound against Tazer’s fucking face.

Also, Patrick wasn’t expecting anything about linen closets. He has no idea what to do with that information.

Patrick knows he’s supposed to figure this one out too. Only—fuck it. Why _should_ he. He’s spent the whole time figuring out so many goddamn things, and he’s sick of it. Jonny wants him to understand everything on his own but he _shouldn’t_. 

“It’s all been a test, hasn’t it?” says Patrick. “Your ideal little bond romance didn’t work out, so now you’re trying to decide whether I’m a good enough fallback option.” He hadn’t meant to say that aloud, not now, at least—not while it was still true. But he knows and Jonny knows and what’s the fucking point of ignoring that, if all it gets Patrick is shouted at.

“Patrick—” Jonny starts.

“Shut up!” Patrick’s just getting fucking _started_ , Tazer’d better not dare try and stop him. “Don’t lie to me and say that you aren’t always doing weird fake bond shit, and, and sitting around waiting for me to figure everything out for myself, because you can’t fucking bear to just tell people things like a normal person.” How _dare_ Jonny try and say linen closets mean anything when he’s completely ridiculous about this shit. 

“I didn’t—” says Jonny, stops.

“Didn’t what,” says Patrick. “Didn’t try to test if I could give you a good enough imitation of the real thing?”

“It’s—it wasn’t supposed to be a test.” Jonny rubs a hand through his hair. He looks upset. “Maybe, it. Was a little. But not like that.”

So. Yeah. Like Patrick needed confirmation. (Patrick maybe did, was hoping he wouldn’t get it.)

“I don’t know why you bothered with this,” he says.

“What?”

“Because there’s no fucking reason that I’m good enough now when I wasn’t six years ago. I’m still not your soulmate, you just lowered your standards.” Patrick feels numb. He’s not sure he really thought it through that far until now. Jonny’s standing there, white and furious with every in-breath visible and Patrick never, ever wants to be someone Jonny settled for.

“I don’t want to pass your fucking test,” says Patrick. “Fuck your test.”

“You have nothing to do with my fucking _standards_ , Kaner,” Jonny says, because of course he would. “My standards are _fine_. _I_ was different six years ago. I didn’t want the same things, I didn’t know, I didn’t—” He pauses. “I love you this time.”

“What,” says Patrick, and feels startled when it’s audible.

“You _know_ I do,” says Jonny. “Fuck you, you know that, you _have_ to know that.” His voice dries up toward the end.

Patrick feels like he’s been hit from behind, one of those times when you get smashed against the boards when you’re not expecting it. Because—Patrick has no fucking idea.

And Patrick’s pretty sure that means he fails the test. 

“No,” says Patrick. “No, I don’t, I don’t know how the _fuck_ I would, you never _say_ and, goddammit—” He stops and takes a breath before his voice does anything weird. “I can’t read your mind. _I can’t read your mind._ I want to think I can sometimes and you want to think I can all the time but I _can’t_.” And he’s never going to, it’s never even going to be similar, for all Jonny would have it otherwise.

Jonny opens his mouth, and Patrick—he’s so fucking scared that Jonny will lie, and he won’t be able to tell the difference.

“No,” says Patrick. “No, Jonny—don’t. Just. Let’s not talk about it right now.”

Jonny closes his mouth and lets out a shaky exhale.

They look at each other for a minute. Fuck, Patrick thinks, fuck this, he still doesn’t think he wants to be in anyone’s head, not even Jonny’s.

“Fine,” says Jonny suddenly. “I need to do some shit, we can do this differently tomorrow. But I love you, okay?” He still sounds pissed off.

Patrick does something he’s not terribly proud of: he shrugs.

“Fuck you,” says Jonny. “Jesus, Patrick.”

Patrick just stands there. 

“You don’t believe me?” says Jonny. “Huh? Well, I’ll show you. You watch.”

He storms out of the condo, leaving Patrick with no clear idea of what he’s going to be shown. Patrick doesn’t even know what he was so mad about to begin with.

It’s not that Patrick doesn’t _believe_ Jonny. 

Patrick is suddenly furious that the couch is facing the windows tonight.

 

*

Eventually Patrick gets tired of staring at the view—rainy, grey lake, getting dark—and goes to look in the linen closet.

He opens the door cautiously. He’s not sure how long it’s been since he last did that, but it looks about the same. Shelves, big space underneath for hampers or whatever. Patrick’s never had anything but his own stuff in his bedroom’s second closet, so. The shelves are nearly bare, just some lightbulbs that he’s pretty sure are burned out, a small lamp he’d been wondering what he did with, and inexplicably, a bottle of diet coke on the bottom shelf. Patrick doesn’t remember how it got there, but even so, he doubts that was the cause of Tazer’s rage.

Patrick takes his finds into the kitchen and makes himself a rum and coke with the old, flat diet coke. That makes it, like, a cocktail, which is classy and hardly even counts as drinking. Does pop expire?

Patrick calls Jonny, to—ask him about expired pop, or something. And yell at him that he can’t possibly have been in love with Patrick without Patrick knowing. Or something. And linen closets. But Jonny doesn’t answer. Patrick’s proud of himself for not leaving a voicemail. He continues with the pop and the rum.

 

Which all goes some way toward explaining how he ends up on Sharpy’s doorstep at 11:37pm that night.

The rain has turned into snow. It’s coming down hard, but the guy driving the taxi Patrick finds takes the corners fast and spins his tires at the green lights. 

Patrick makes it to Sharpy’s door alive, though he’ll probably freeze to death if he waits much longer. He never put on a coat, that’s the problem with condos. He bets Sharpy never forgets to put on a coat when he leaves his house. Sharpy is taking forever to come to the door, though there’s a light on inside and no way is he in bed already. Right?

A shadow finally looms up behind the windows in the door, and then Sharpy’s standing there. He’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants and looks startled to find there was really somebody knocking, but Patrick’s sure he wasn’t in bed, even Sharpy hasn’t fallen that far.

Sharpy looks blank. Patrick tries to explain but he gives up when he notices it isn’t very intelligible.

“Is something wrong?” Sharpy’s frowning, leaning forward on the doorjamb. “Were you drinking?”

“Yep and yep,” says Patrick. “It’s a disaster. Can I come in?”

“Uh,” says Sharpy, and Patrick realizes he does not have a good reason to be here, or any reason at all, except that the whole thing seems to come back to Sharpy in the end, somehow. Or at least it had twenty minutes ago in much warmer surroundings. But Sharpy lets Patrick in.

“Keep your voice down,” Sharpy warns. Patrick doesn’t feel like he could say this loudly anyway.

“Well, um,” says Patrick, lowering slowly onto the couch. “Jonny says he loves me. It’s a disaster, like I said.”

“A-ah.” Sharpy’s eyes have gone a little wider than usual. “Uh, Kaner, is this _news_ to you? That guy has wanted a romantic bond since he found out what bonds were. Did you think he wanted to be _friends?_ ”

Patrick sinks forward and rests his head in his hands. His voice is kinda muffled when he says, “Oh, fuck, is that what everyone thinks?” They can’t, can they? One of the guys would’ve said something, for sure. Imagine the Hawks all being polite and discreet, oh wait, you can’t.

“We-ell. No, I don’t think so. Anna was before some of their times. And at first I thought maybe he’d changed his mind—but obviously he didn’t.”

Patrick peers up at Sharpy through his fingers. “He did,” he says. “Or. Well.” Patrick doesn’t _know_. He doesn’t know if Jonny has changed his mind about romantic bonds or just thinks he’ll never have one. “I guess he _thinks_ he changed his mind?”

Sharpy sighs, much louder than is necessary. “Patrick, you’re not explaining this very well.”

“I can’t!” Patrick jumps to his feet, staggers and catches himself against the arm of the couch. “Jonny came charging in yelling something about how I should’ve known about linen closets, and then he said he loved me, and charged back out. I don’t know what the fuck. He’s not answering his phone.”

Sharpy looks confused—understandably. “But. Wouldn’t you _know_ what he was talking about? If he was right there.”

Patrick says, “No.” It comes out very quiet.

Sharpy just waits. His kids will have so much trouble keeping secrets.

“We’re not bonded,” Patrick mumbles. “It’s not real. We faked it.” It feels weird, saying it now. More like a lie than when he’d told Erica. He can’t believe the first person he’s admitting this to besides her is motherfucking _Sharpy_. 

“What?” says Sharpy blankly. “You mean you—what?” He comes to his feet and takes a step closer. Patrick edges back against the couch.

“Jonny convinced me,” says Patrick, fast and a little high-pitched. “He said it’d be easy because bonds in hockey are bullshit anyway, and I guess he was right because _you_ believed it, everybody believed it. Jonny’s always wanted to prove that.”

“But why the fuck would you do it?” Sharpy is just staring at him.

“Because I didn’t want a fucking bond with _you!_ ”That wasn’t being very quiet. Oops.

There is a brief silence. 

“Well, shit, Peeks,” says Sharpy.

Patrick stares at the carpet. It sounds kind of shitty, put that way. It’s not Sharpy’s fault they’re compatible, and only a little his fault that management got onto it, and not his fault at all that Jonny is crazy. There’s a clock in this room that Patrick never noticed before. 

“Not just you,” Patrick mumbles. “I mean, anyone. I just. Didn’t wanna. Ever.”

“And Jonny,” starts Sharpy, stops, and then says, “Okay, look, this makes no fucking sense. Were you planning to keep it up forever, or what? What does this have to do with—love, or anything? And why the hell would either of you think this was a good idea?” Now Sharpy’s getting louder too.

“It was a test,” Patrick explains. “It was a test and I thought I could win.”

“You don’t win tests, did you even go to school,” says Sharpy. “ _What_ was a test.”

“Us,” Patrick says. “You know about Jonny and bonds. Well, now it’s fake bonds. And meditation. And—stuff. But I didn’t know he was in love with me.” He stops and rubs his forehead. It’s been an hour since the last drink but that’s probably not long enough.

“O-kay,” says Sharpy. He does not sound enlightened.

“I’ve always kind of wanted—you know. With Jonny. Or wondered.” Patrick’s not sure there’s any use in trying to explain. Too many years, and he’s never thought of most of it directly. The lure of the forbidden fruit, he’d told himself, only that doesn’t apply anymore and he’s not sure what to do about that.

“What’s so bad about Jonny saying he loves you, then?”

“You don’t understand!” Patrick snaps, and wishes it back, because he’s sure it isn’t a very understandable thing at present. 

“Yes, Kaner.” Sharpy nods slowly. “That is _very true._ ” 

“I—” Patrick shrugs and looks away. “I don’t know. It’s just. You know.” Sharpy doesn’t, is the problem.

Sharpy looks at him for a moment.

“This really doesn’t seem like an emergency,” says Sharpy finally. “You gotta go home and sleep it off. We have a game tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Patrick mumbles. He looks past Sharpy’s right shoulder. There’s the clock, hanging on the wall. “Sorry.” 

“Look,” says Sharpy then, louder, and he gives Patrick a nudge in the shoulder so that it’s harder to avoid eye contact than not. “You’re both my friends, and it sounds like you might have something good going here. You might both be way dumber than I ever realized, but I’m sure you’ll figure this out. During the daytime. Okay? Okay. Get some sleep.”

Patrick lets Sharpy call him a taxi and doesn’t try to explain anything else. It’s a wait, Sharpy sits next to him on the couch and makes some vague comments about the Flyers. Their last game got interesting. Patrick doesn’t think Sharpy’s all that furious with him or anything but it’s still weird.

The snow is piling up in drifts, the wind leaving icy bare patches on the streets. This cab driver is slower. Patrick’s head is pounding by the time he gets home.

 

*

Patrick’s feeling better by the time he heads to morning skate. He hasn’t heard back from Jonny, but he’ll see him in a few minutes. They can have it out at the rink, whatever. Jonny’ll be pissed because they have a game tonight but that’s just how it goes.

Patrick thinks he’s gotten every red light on the way. The roads aren’t too bad after last night’s dumping of snow but they aren’t great either. He’s—maybe a little nervous. Maybe should’ve gone to Jonny’s place this morning.

He stomps into the locker room with a sense of purpose. He will sort this out. Then—he looks around.

There’s something very wrong. 

This is not the locker room getting ready for practice. Nobody’s talking. Nobody’s put their gear on. Everyone’s just wandering around looking lost and confused. Duncs is across the room and his eyes are even crazier than Tazer’s before a playoff game. He spots Patrick.

“Patrick, oh, thank fuck,” says Duncs. “Finally someone who might know what’s going on.”

Everyone in the room turns to stare at Patrick.

“Uh.” He grimaces. “I don’t think I do?”

They’re all exchanging glances, and Patrick doesn’t know what the fuck. This is way worse than Jonny last night and there’s no reason he should be able to read _their_ minds.

Bicks finally steps up. “Okay, so,” he says. “Don’t freak out, I’m sure it’s not a big deal, but Tazer might’ve gotten stripped of the captaincy.”

Patrick freezes.

Oh. _Oh_. Last night, maybe—the bond. They found out about the bond. Management found out and now they’re fucked, Patrick’s _fucked_ and Jonny—

Bickell’s shaking him by the arm. “Don’t freak out,” he orders. “Everyone is counting on you.”

“What,” says Patrick. “ _What?_ Don’t do that! I don’t— where is Jonny?”

“We-ll…that’s just it,” Bicks says. “We don’t know.”

Patrick looks around at the team. They’re still all staring at him—except for Hoss, who’s got a stick and is picking very carefully at the tape on the blade. Leddy and Smith keep shuffling from side to side. Duncs is clenching his jaw so hard Patrick can see it, and—wait. 

“Where’s Sharpy?” Patrick asks.

“He’s meeting with Bowman,” says Duncs. He sounds relieved to have a question he can answer.

Oh, Jesus, Patrick thinks. Put it all together and it really doesn’t sound very good. “Where’s Q?” he says.

Everyone kind of shrugs and glances at each other.

“Mike didn’t know,” says Saader. “Maybe he’s with Bowman.” He takes a breath, then bursts out, “Kaner, you’ve _got_ to know something about this. What was Jonny thinking last time you saw him, when was that?”

“Last night at my place,” says Patrick without thinking. Shit, they’ll wonder about that later. “But he wasn’t—well, uh.” Patrick has no idea what to say. The easiest story is that Jonny wasn’t thinking anything relevant to the current situation, but it’s probably not true and certainly isn’t helpful. 

“I have no idea where he is,” says Patrick, because that is accurate and because he doesn’t want to give the whole thing away before he’s sure. He needs to talk to Sharpy. Who’s currently talking to Bowman, and as of last night has a very confused understanding of the whole thing but has got a handle on the main point: Patrick and Jonny lied about being bonded. God damn it.

“But you can help find him,” says Bickell. “Just think, okay. If it’s big problem, it can’t have started this morning. There must have been some clues. Things that Tazer thought about that might have something to do with this. Right?” He looks so fucking eager and Patrick’s gonna crush his hopes.

“What even happened before I got here?” he asks, directing it at Duncs this time. It’s his job, managing this shit, the only guy with a letter in the room.

“When I got here, Seabs told me Bowman was here and meeting with Jonny,” Duncs says. “A little after that, Leddy came in and said he saw Jonny on the phone heading out of here. Leddy said he looked mad. He was shouting, and I quote, ‘It doesn’t matter, I won’t be captain anymore.’ Leddy heard him.”

Leddy nods, solemn and silent.

Well, that’s. Not a totally unreasonable route they took to this conclusion. And Patrick has a whole explanation for it, even.

“Are we still skating this morning?” Smitty asks. The team swings to look at Duncs.

Duncs says, “Shit. I don’t know. _Shit_.” Duncs is clearly wishing he didn’t have the A right now.

Seabs gives him a whack on the shoulder. “Fucking keep it together, man. Let’s see what Sharpy says. They can’t keep him in there forever.”

They all sit down on the benches and wait. Patrick feels like they can keep Sharpy forever. People wander in and out, wondering where the hell everyone is. Utter confusion is shared by all. 

Smitty’s putting his stuff on. Patrick thinks that’s optimistic.

They’ve stopped swiveling their heads every time the door opens. There’s a moment before Saader yells, “Sharpy!”

Everyone’s on their feet then and talking at once. What did Bowman say, where is Jonny, where is Q, are you the captain now, what the fuck happened? Sharpy stands in the doorway and holds up his hands.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Calm down. Duncs, you first.”

“What happened?” asks Duncs. Everyone awaits the answer with bated breath. That will surely cover everything.

“…I’m not sure,” says Sharpy. “Hey! Shh!” He holds up one hand again against the revived clamor. “Bowman doesn’t know either. _He_ was asking me where Jonny was. Jonny never went to their meeting at all.”

“So you’re not captain,” says Saader.

“Uh, no. And I did _not_ mention the Leddy thing to Bowman.” Sharpy looks over at Patrick, and Patrick feels like it’s directed at him when he adds, “And for what it’s worth, Jonny was the one who set up the meeting with Bowman, not the other way around.”

“What,” says Patrick. That doesn’t make sense. Jonny wouldn’t have been going to confess, would he? From the look on Sharpy’s face, he’s equally at sea.

“Maybe he’s just gone crazy,” Saader pipes up hopefully.

They’re all looking between each other, clueless and highly alarmed, and Patrick is supposed to know the most of everyone.

“Let me have a look for him,” says Patrick. “If anyone can figure it out, I can.”

And that’s not even a lie.

 

*

That doesn’t mean Patrick is sure where to go from here. Maybe he’d be better off just skating, because he still can’t read Jonny’s mind, even with the unexpected and inexplicable confessions of love, what the fuck, and—

It occurs to Patrick, then.

Jonny _told_ him. Maybe only because he thought Patrick already knew, but. He said the words. And he didn’t tell them like a secret either. 

Jonny never denied it was a test but Jonny is stupid and often wrong. Patrick drops his bag into the car.

That probably meant something, Jonny in Patrick’s condo and trying to be matter-of-fact, only Patrick didn’t notice till now. Patrick’s fucking worthless at this shit, probably worse than Jonny. Jonny still has his phone off.

There comes a time to call in reinforcements. Phone a friend. Or a sister, in this case.

Erica picks up on the first ring.

“Where the fuck have you been lately?”

“Busy having sex with Jonny, mostly,” says Patrick. Best to get straight to the point. 

There are some unintelligible sounds from the other end of the phone, and then Erica says, “What the fuck is going on in Chicago?”

“I wish someone would tell me that,” says Patrick sadly. “Nobody can find Jonny and there are crazy rumors. And I think we, like, need to have a talk about our relationship.”

“I thought that ship had sailed,” says Erica.

“It did,” says Patrick, “and then I built another ship and caught up with it. Or Jonny did, I guess, with the fake bond. Anyway, he said he was in love with me.”

“That’s…good?” Erica ventures.

“Yeah, but. I feel like he wants me to behave just like a bondmate even though I’m not, and that’s just gonna be a disaster, and he didn’t say it in, like, a loving way, and then he went stomping out and slammed the—”

Patrick breaks off, feels his eyes going wide.

“ _Oh god._ ”

The fucking _linen closet_. 

“Erica. Erica. Shit, I just realized.” Shit. He’d _known_ there was something weird about the doors that day last week. Subconsciously, and what fucking good is a subconscious anyway?

“Brisson knows,” says Patrick. “He knows the bond is fake. _Shit_.” 

Patrick should’ve used the linen closet. Then there wouldn’t have been all that empty space for sneaky agents. It was the _doors_ , Jonny was probably right that he should’ve noticed. It hadn’t just been Jonny he’d heard, going out of the condo.

“Uh, why?” Erica asks.

“I’m pretty positive he was hiding in the linen closet last Wednesday while we were fucking. And like, mentioning that we weren’t bonded.” 

“You mentioned it while you were…fucking?”

“Yes,” says Patrick, because he doesn’t have time to explain. This is an _emergency_. “I need to find Jonny. Now. I’ll talk to you later.”

“But—”

Patrick hangs up on her. He’ll pay for that later, but by that time his entire life will probably be in ruins and Erica’s rage will be a pleasant dose of normalcy.

He thinks about Brisson. About all the things Jonny could tell Brisson and won’t.

And he might be able to guess what Jonny is doing today.

Oh _no._

 

He needs more help. He texts Sharpy and asks him to meet him at the rink. Sharpy’s still there, because he was being responsible and not running off at a moment’s notice.

“Get in the car.” Patrick shoos him in and swings out of the parking space.

“Would you mind telling me where we’re going?” Sharpy enquires.

“To find Jonny.”

“Yes, but where?”

“Dunno yet.” He’ll figure it out as he drives. It feels better being in the car, like he’s actually accomplishing something.

“Um,” says Sharpy. “In that case, would you mind telling me…I don’t know, anything at all?”

“I figured it out,” Patrick says, a tiny bit proudly. “I think Jonny’s meeting with Brisson. Probably about bonding with him.” He pulls onto West Madison and notices it is taking Sharpy awhile to respond. “He is, okay.”

“A-ah,” says Sharpy, “I find that wildly unlikely.”

“No, it makes perfect sense.” And it does. Brisson found out; Patrick’s sure of that now. Brisson thinks Jonny knows all sorts of things he _really_ wants to know, and Brisson knows something Jonny _really_ doesn’t want him to tell. It’d be a trade. And—Jonny said he was gonna show Patrick. Bonding with Brisson is one way of doing that, because God knows they’re never gonna have a soulmate romance together. The thought of it is just disturbing.

“Are Brisson and Tazer even compatible?” asks Sharpy.

“Yeah,” says Patrick. “And he never said until like a couple of weeks ago, either.”

Sharpy looks unnerved. “Do you think Jonny was ever the way he was with Anna with Brisson?”

“Fuck you! Don’t even put that idea in my head.” Patrick fumbles for his phone and tosses it to Sharpy. “Call Jonny and put it on speaker.” He pulls to the side of the road for better concentration on the yelling.

It goes to voicemail again, so Patrick just says, “I know what you’re doing, you fuck, don’t you dare. Don’t you _dare_ bond with Brisson. I’ll kill you, I really will.” And, “Okay, hang up,” to Sharpy.

Sharpy silently slides his thumb across the screen, not taking his eyes off Patrick.

“This is…” He trails off. “…Are you sure you aren’t jumping to conclusions?”

“We-ell,” says Patrick. “It’s Jonny, okay? I know how this goes. You’d understand if you were bonded.”

“But,” says Sharpy. “But. You. Aren’t either.”

“Semantics!” says Patrick, and hits the gas. Where would Jonny and Brisson go? He’s been heading toward the office where Brisson would’ve met Jonny before—but Jonny wouldn’t trust Brisson right now, wouldn’t want to be alone with him in private. Maybe...

“I thought you said you failed the test,” says Sharpy.

“When you think about it,” says Patrick sagely, “isn’t being in love basically a type of bond?”

“No,” Sharpy says. “That’s not the same thing at all. You’re starting to sound as crazy as Tazer. Wait, does this mean you’re in love too?”

Patrick says, “None of your business,” which is admittedly an insane thing to say to Sharpy at this stage, but Patrick can’t tell Sharpy first.

They’re still heading toward the office. Patrick doesn’t think Jonny’ll be there now, but—

Maybe someone else did. Q is striding briskly along the sidewalk.

Patrick slams to a stop that gets a muffled yell out of Sharpy. He has a feeling Q might know something. He bolts out of the car, waving at Sharpy to do whatever needs to be done. Hopefully he won’t just drive off and leave him here.

Q has noticed Patrick’s rapid approach by now. He stops and raises his eyebrows.

“What’re you doing here?” Patrick demands.

“I was looking for Jonny.” Nothing in his face or voice gives Patrick any clue as to what today has looked like from Q’s perspective. If anything, he seems unreasonably calm.

“What for?” asks Patrick.

“Because I wondered if he might be doing something stupid.” Q looks at Patrick a moment, eyes narrowed, then says, “I know you aren’t really bonded.”

“What?” Patrick tries to look as clueless as possible. Just in case.

“I’ve coached real bonds,” Q says. “I know what I’m looking at.”

Patrick doesn’t know what the fuck to say to that. He’d wondered about Q a few times, and the guy doesn’t look like he wants an apology. “But...why wouldn’t you tell?”

Q shrugs. “I like what I’ve been seeing from the two of you. Why stop something that’s working?”

Patrick supposes that lineups could be based on worse things than a pack of lies about bonds.

“You’re going to find him?” Q asks.

“Yes,” says Patrick, confident and nothing like he feels.

Q nods approvingly. “Good. You’re doing your job. That’s what I want to see.”

Patrick feels like he’s been given some hockey challenge.

 

Sharpy has circled the block. By the time he pulls to a stop, Patrick has a clearer idea of where to look next.

Sharpy grudgingly cedes the driver’s seat, and Patrick turns the car in a new direction.

Smith & Wollensky, the site of last dinner they had before the bar where Jonny started it all. Narratives can rub off on you sometimes. Plus, Brisson loves that place. He’d never do anything to jeopardize his enjoyment of his steak, so Jonny would have him at a disadvantage.

“You sure about this?” asks Sharpy. 

“That’s how Jonny is,” he says. If he’s wrong it’ll be someplace else in the area—it’d fucking better be.

He doesn’t think Sharpy even believes the Brisson compatibility thing yet. It’s been kind of a lot to throw at a guy. He only found out about the fake bond last night.

“Tell the team to come,” Patrick tells Sharpy. “We might need reinforcements.”

“For what, precisely?” Sharpy sounds nervous.

“To stop Jonny.”

Sharpy picks up his phone. He knows as well as anyone that stopping Jonny from doing anything is more than a two-man job.

 

*

Jonny’s there. He’s really fucking there. Patrick didn’t know how much he’d doubted it till he was proven right. 

Jonny and Brisson are seated at a table for two by the window, talking. Brisson has evidently been dining in fine style. Jonny’s having a glass of water and is probably gonna be footing the bill, because Jonny is like that.

Several other teammates are wandering in, confused but gamely answering Sharpy’s call.

“Jonny!” calls Patrick, dodging the guy asking how many are in his party. “Hey!” 

Saader’s among the arrivals and he’s spotted Jonny too. Jonny glances up, eyes widening when he takes in the oncoming rush.

The maitre d’ makes a distressed sound behind them.

For a minute it’s everyone talking over each other, _Jonny, Jonny, where were you, what happened, what the fuck_. Jonny and Brisson are both on their feet.

“Hey!” says Brisson, suddenly and loudly. “Shh.” Then he sits down and resumes eating his steak.

“So,” says Jonny. He looks toward Patrick. “Uh.”

“Everything’s fine,” says Patrick quickly. “Totally. It’s gonna be fine.”

“Is it?” Jonny looks a little wild-eyed. Patrick doesn’t know what Brisson told him, what this looks like from Jonny’s head. Different, probably.

Let’s face it, if anyone’s career is getting fucked up over this, it isn’t gonna be Jonny. He’d have to join in on purpose. That’s possibly what’s happening if he’s doing anything with Brisson.

“Don’t,” says Patrick. “Don’t—do anything. You don’t have to. It’s all under control.”

“Is it,” says Jonny dubiously.

“Well—not exactly, but. Fuck, Jonny.”

Patrick stands there and looks at him. He’s just the same as always, and Patrick wonders where it was that anything changed. Whether it came on gradually or struck suddenly in the night. Jonny’s going vaguely red. It was probably whenever Patrick started making him do that.

Jonny’s gaze flicks toward their audience and back to Patrick.

“I meant it, last night,” he says. “I just—wasn’t sure how to say it.” Jonny doesn’t really know these things either, it turns out.

Brisson clears his throat. Patrick does not fucking need Brisson talking right now.

“Q knows,” Patrick blurts. “He knew all along. It’s gonna—look, I really think it’ll be okay.” It’s not just the team that he’s trying to convince Jonny about. He glances behind him. More people have shown up; Sharpy really _did_ get the message out to everyone.

“I don’t know,” says Jonny. “I don’t want to fuck everything up with you, not again.”

All that time, and Patrick had thought he was the only one who’d fucked anything up. 

“You won’t,” says Patrick. “Not unless you bond with Brisson, you idiot.”

There’s a murmur from the throng at that. Patrick doesn’t look away from Jonny. He’s so fucking stoic, so intent on giving nothing away, but he’s already told Patrick everything he needs to know.

“I’m _not_ ,” says Jonny. “I was just gonna, you know. Listen to him float the idea. We could figure out what to do with him later.”

Brisson looks very nonplussed at this. Good.

“What’s going on?” asks Seabs finally.

Patrick gives Jonny a tiny nod. He’s ready to have done with all this, now, before it gets any more out of hand. That doesn’t seem possible but it probably is.

Jonny looks away, shoulders set like he’s bracing himself for something.

“We’re not bonded,” says Jonny. “We’re—” He looks back to Patrick, and Patrick nods again. “We’re just together,” he finishes.

Silence. Then—

“I fucking _knew_ it,” says Crow. “I _knew_ there was something fishy about it. Tazer wouldn’t have bonded with someone if it wasn’t romantic, and you were saying it wasn’t romantic. You were distracting us by pretending to be hiding your relationship, when what you were really hiding was your fake bond. Except you were hiding your relationship after all, so it was a double-blind.” He nods. “Clever.”

“Uh,” says Patrick.

“That’s ridiculous,” says Brisson.

Patrick rounds on him. “Shut up, you wouldn’t even be here if you had enough integrity not to hide in people’s closets.”

“Wait, but. Why?” asks Leddy.

Sharpy sighs loudly. “If you can understand their explanations, let me know.”

“You know how Tazer is with bonds,” says Seabs, kind of distractedly.

The maitre d’ has been trying to shoo them out for awhile. Patrick figures they’d better head for the door before the Blackhawks get themselves banned from this fine establishment.

“You’re really not bonded,” says Saader, just outside. The sky is already darker than before. They’ve wasted a whole damn day on this.

“Yeah,” says Patrick.

Jonny comes up beside him. “It was my idea.”

“Yup,” Patrick concurs. “He’s the real idiot here, so if you’ve got any problems you can take them up with him.”

Saader just looks from Jonny to Patrick and shrugs. “Huh.”

_Huh_ seems to be as far as most of them have gotten. And it’s—Patrick isn’t _sure_ it’s going to be alright, once the confusion wears off, but Duncs gives them a reassuring smile. It doesn’t look right on his face.

They’re all huddled on the riverwalk now, getting in people’s way. Patrick feels like everyone’s waiting to be formally dismissed, although Brisson hardly has that excuse to be there.

“You’ll have to think about how to handle this,” comments Brisson. “I counted at least seven people listening to that entire conversation.”

“Shut up!” says Patrick. 

“I think Patrick’s firing me,” says Brisson, smirking a little. “Jonny?”

“Uh, I guess I am too?” says Jonny. He scratches his head and glances up toward the sky, then suddenly says, “Shit. What time is it? Guys! Hey! We have a game.”

That’s enough to get people moving, finally. They still have to play tonight. Patrick thinks this is the closest the team has ever come to literally forgetting about a game. Fuck, tonight might be a mess.

 

He and Jonny amble along the river, a little behind the rest.

“So,” says Jonny.

“Yeah…” says Patrick. “They’re gonna think we faked a bond to be together, or something.” It’s not the worst thing they could think.

“At least we’re actually together,” says Jonny. “I mean—we are, right?”

“I guess,” says Patrick, and laughs, and it’s probably fair when Jonny pushes him into a pile of snow. He flops back, letting out a rush of breath as Jonny looms over him.

“Patrick—” says Jonny, and then drops down beside Patrick and reaches a hand out.

“For fuck’s sake,” says Patrick. 

Jonny’s icy fingers twitch at Patrick’s wrist and jerk up his sleeve.

“Jonny…” says Patrick. It’s probably unsafe for the back of your head to go numb, it could kill your brain cells or something.

Jonny doesn’t say anything right away, just heaves a sigh that shifts his fingers and sends a chill up Patrick’s arm.

“It wasn’t a test for you,” Jonny says. “Maybe for me. I’m not settling for anything. It’s just different than I—it’s not something I was prepared for.”

“That’s okay,” says Patrick. Because not being able to read Jonny’s mind, that’s something he can’t fix. Jonny not being able to read his, on the other hand, he can do a lot more about.

And Patrick—Patrick’s maybe gonna end up on the ground in weird places, and with Tazer pressing letters against his skin, hands hidden down out of sight. It’s getting dark, but not so dark that passers-by won’t spot the two crazy guys lying in the snow. Patrick wants Jonny however he does it.

“I love you,” he says, loud enough that people nearby will think they’re even crazier. “And I’m freezing to death in the snow for you, how about that?”

He looks over at Jonny, who’s got his eyes closed and face blank, except for the tiniest twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

Patrick wasn’t really prepared for it either, but then nobody ever is. It’s a type of bond, whatever Sharpy says.

“Up,” says Patrick, tugging at Jonny’s arm. They have a game, they have management to deal with, they have a lot of shit to get done.

They get to their feet, but Patrick stays there with his arms looped around Jonny’s waist, not wanting to move away. Jonny looks at him, slow breaths, his hand coming up to Patrick’s chin.

“I want this,” says Jonny. “With you. Nobody else.”

There’s something in his face that Patrick feels too, hot and clenched in the bottom of his throat. Patrick’s never going to read Jonny’s mind. There are things that don’t need telepathy and don’t need any convincing, either.

Patrick knows.


End file.
